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Electronics Projects for 12-Year-Olds?
nepheles asks: "I've recently been asked to teach some electronics classes for a group of 12-year-olds. They're all new to it. Electronics always seemed boring in school, so for them, I've been looking at hands-on projects: I've considered making basic motors, steady-hand games, and Morse-code communication systems. What experiments have you seen in electronics that amazed you, and that could be recreated in the classroom? What cool things have you made that would be simple enough for a kid to do? At a meta level, how would you like to have been taught electronics?"
Super easy to build. We made a bunch of boards for some elementary school kids and had them solder on the components and play with the thing in general. We were kind of time limited to a few hours, but it was a good experience.
making a Tesla Coil?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
If you show them anything with AC or that has any cyclic voltage variation, show it to them on an oscilloscope.... It's much easier to a 12yo if they can visualise what is going on.
However basic electronics is the stuff that 12yo kids get - show them the foundations...
The wire-wound rheostat.
The two-pencil carbon arc.
Heating nichrome wire to make a poor filament.
Build a battery in a beaker.
Hand-wind a motor and build it on plywood with
wire.
Electromagnet locking to a piece of metal.
Morse key, with a solenoid recording the results.
You want to show them something so that the building block *stays* in their mind....
If the idea is simple enough, it stays with them forever.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
A persistance of vision toy, which is a simple microcontroller that blinks 8 LEDs on and off so that when waved through the air, an image or message appears to float in front of the viewer can be made in bulk for really cheap.
As technology changes, we start off learning about it at a higher level. Nobody learns to use electron tubes these days, though they are used in some applications.
Take a similar approach. Provide some basic understanding of the transistor, but don't make a circuit that simply blinks. Instead set them up about 10 years behind the curve rather than 20: throw together a small microcontroller board and a breadboard with some components. Maybe just give them a bare microcontroller to insert into the board.
Start with a few basic circuits, light an LED, amplify a light or sound source, make a touch sensor. Then get them to write a small program for the microcontroller, to blink a light. After that, try something a little more interactive like a who-pressed-the-button-first game.
A mess of transistors and wires isn't inspiring, and most of the kids won't have any idea how to come up with useful circuits on their own. But when they realize how much they can do with a microcontroller, watch their eyes light up. Well, maybe some of the geekier ones will. But use the microcontroller as the core, and introduce analog concepts as they relate, for example doing R/C calculations for a smooth PWM signal.
A single programmable component can often replace or exceed the function of dozens of discrete components. That's where things are heading these days, though analog designers are still needed. I just think you should introduce some technology of our generation so they won't blow off electronics as a lot of work to get a result a thousand times less exciting than what their cell phone can do.
Have them make LED flashlights. It's a good oppertunity to introduce basic circuits, along with ohm's law. And if yoiu really want to get into it, you could do pot work for variable intensity.
Live life to the fullest. It's not that life is short, but that you are dead for so long.
This isn't exactly electronics, but it's fun (and yes, it is my site and yes, it looks like crap, but it was my first web site and I keep it that way for nostalgic reasons :-)
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~palmer/motor.html
For "real" electronics, if you just want to make a easy and fun project, most kids are usually impressed by things that blink LEDs (like a scanner sequencer type circuit) or make noise (I would suggest sirens).
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Make loud noises
Give off heat or flames
Give of bright light
move on it's own
be capable of irritating your friends at lunch
So, overloading exploding LED capacitors are the answer!
so yeah, making your own motors would work, building a race car with a pair of small motors and a headlight with a wired remote to start/stop, homebuilt radio, a small generator to light a lightbulb, etc.
Lastly, be sure it's durable, cause they will be dropped and abused a lot on the way home to show mom and dad.
SAILING MISHAP
but Radio Shack's electronic project kits were the key for me. When my dad showed me how to light a light bulb with a battery i immediately had him take me to radio shack and get me one.
... then, when i was about 10, i was working on my project kits and suddenly it hit me... "dude there are girls out there. go get one!" so I went outside, hopped on my bike, rode down the *sidewalk*, and was smashed by a car coming out of the alley at 35mph. i was thrown right into the street, skipping the part of the alley between the sidewalk and the street, some 20 feet away. no broken bones but a concussion and a broken eardrum.
...
I spent the next 4 years doing nothing but tinkering with my project kits. I made radios, motion detectors, calculators, wind generators... i wound up fixing TVs and walkman radios, and game consoles for friends.
i kept off the electronic project kits but i never did get a girlfriend until i was 18.
my lesson to you - stay away from electronics, and keep the kids away too. I mean it.
this is a true story, by the way. all too true. I still can't hear things like digital watches out of my left ear
Bizarre Labs has some great stuff. Lemon batteries, crystal radios, electro-magnets, leyden jars. Even plans for Tesla coils and radioactive cloud chambers are there.
This does beg the question: What are the basic principles that need to be covered. Here are some that I would imagine are important:
Magnetism
Electromagnetism
Basic Circuits and electron flow
Photon Simultaneity
... well maybe not that last one, success rates are still pretty low. You might have to build up to that with a few simple explanatory topics.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
A co-worker bought one of these awhile back, and I was impressed with it. Not a bad choice for a bright 12-year-old.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
..Noone has mentioned it. C'mon, this is Slashdot! Why hasn't anyone mentioned teaching the kids about logic gates?!
Get some relays and such and teach them the basics of digital logic by building electromechanical logic gates. Infact, show them just the basics or how the relay works, etc. and try to get them to think about how to make it do what it needs to do. They're kids, they've got imagination out the wazoo, they can think of lots of neat things. And it gets them interested in how computers work, rather than just playing video games on the things.