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Ideas For High School Electronics Class?
mithrandirFan asks: "I am about to teach an electronics class at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, a school for academically gifted 11th and 12th grade high school students. There is no set curriculum for this class. In the past, the class has been taught with BASIC Stamps. By the end of the class, the student had built a fairly simple robot that could do things such as running away from light, following a wall, etc. I was wondering if the /. community had any other ideas that I could use in enhance the class. Keep in mind that there is no past electronic or programming experience required for the class, but also these are academically gifted students."
Hi,
My Highschool electronics class was probably the most enjoyable class I took in High School. However, in order to get a really good understanding of robotics in general, I think it is extrememly important to build the robots out of discrete compononents.
No, I don't mean transistor by transistor. I mean logic gates and ICS. For one project, we created what were effectively turing machines (email me for the source, err schematics.) These were fiarly easy to make with a 555 a few gates and a counting chip.
There are a few reasons why this is better. First, electrical engineering really requires a different kind of thinking than programming does. (I'll never forget the look on my friends face when we got the assignment. He said: "But wait! That means we would need ifs...") Second, people feel more comfortable tinkering with stuff with electronics when they know exactly how all of it works. (I would love to hear one of you guys explain to me how a basic stamp works...) Finally, there are no expensive components to buy!
Also, another project you guys might enjoy is buying a cheap R/C car from radioshack, and hacking it to do something interesting, like follow a path, or come towards a noise or something.
Good Luck!!
--Alex Fishman
Crystal radios. Home-brewing different variable capacitors can be pretty educational.
Digital logic design. We had a number of projects in my freshman year of college that were good for a classroom. Each had you build a circuit to fit a standard interface. On one challenge, you switched model trains based on inputs from magnetic sensors. (Though the trains broke a lot). Another fed your circuit a 4-bit counter and got back turtle-graphics coordinates (4 bits for x, 4 bits for y and 1 bit for pen up or down). The result was drawn on a scope (though now you'd do it on a PC). Another had to play a version of the old "Mastermind" game. For each of these, part of your grade depended on the circuit cost (chip count) and part depended on your performance. (For the drawing one, people judged each others pictures).
Animated displays/art. Kids always got a kick out of building animated homecoming, halloween, etc. displays.