Gadgets For a Budding Geek?

fprintf writes "As much as I hate to admit it, it looks like my 13-year-old son is following in my footsteps and preferring interesting, science-based toys. In the past he has been really interested in Lava Lamps, Newton's Cradle, and anything magnetic. It seems the knick-knacks that have generated the most interest were small and relatively inexpensive. For example, a small laser pointer keychain I bought him a couple of years ago still provides tons of entertainment. Yesterday I showed him ThinkGeek and he really liked the Levitron. I wanted to ask the Slashdot crowd what were some other really neat, interesting gadgets? Is there anything cool in the under-$50 range that you would like in your stocking this year?"

Comments

"/."liza.

[Ostracus]

""As much as I hate to admit it, it looks like my 13-year-old son is following in my footsteps and preferring interesting, science-based toys."

Why do you hate to admit it?

Re:"/."liza.

[TerranFury]

It's possible, I suppose, to start a fire with a current-limited 5V or 15V breadboard supply -- but I think it'd take some effort. I've never seen a serious fire happen. Worst case, a chip melts and leaves a scar on the breadboard -- not a problem. So really, I wouldn't worry about it. Riding a bicycle is more dangerous.

And breadboards are great things. If his son wants to build something permanent or high frequency, then, sure, bring out the soldering iron. But I think that, as educational tools and as toys, breadboards put the emphasis on the right things -- tinkering, experimentation, and component reuse -- rather than fabrication, painstaking care, and permanence. I'm afraid that what happens all too often when electronics are approached from the second point of view is that the hobbyist treats doing an electronics project as (1) finding a schematic, and (2) building it. And while it's true that you learn things that way, I think that breadboards are better educational tools and better toys because they encourage experimentation and creativity more, and put the focus on the circuits rather than the fabrication thereof. The OP's son is more likely to come up with his own circuits on a breadboard than with a soldering iron in hand.

The one tool that is wonderful in an electronics lab is an oscilloscope, and I imagine that trying to do a lot without one would get very frustrating very quickly. So we're not talking sub-$50 range. But if the OP himself is interested in hobbyist electronics, then perhaps he could think of some of the more expensive purchases as "the family's" rather than just as "toys" for his son, in the same way that my dad had a toolbox that I used.

Mindstorms and such are also very cool. I kind of want a set myself. ;-)

Finally, a message to the OP himself: Stuff for tinkering is better than "science-themed gadgets." Mindstorms, capsela, electronics kits, and the like (even a QBASIC interpreter) spur creativity and are actually fun to play with (or, they were for me). Whereas I think that gadgets that demonstrate a particular physical effect end up being short-lived novelties more than anything else. And above all, expose him to lots of things: Erector sets, musical instruments, athletic equipment. See what sticks, and encourage whatever he likes.

Right in front of you

[R2.0]

As I write this the ad under this topic is for the Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set.

I think that should settle it.

Same thing but for 7 year olds

[cryfreedomlove]

There is a cluster of 7 year old siblings and cousins in my family, both boys and girls. I'd love to start a subtopic here on Christmas geek gifts available for this age group. One example: my son is asking for a Rock Polisher.

Arduino

[mishley]

Seems to me like you can do an awful lot with the Arduino platform. I recommend buying from the Make guys, as you'll also see that they've published a book recently with the Arduino developers/creators that maybe your kid would like as a follow-on? They are only $30.00 and the only requirement is a computer to plug the thing into for programming. I'm asking my wife for one :-). For project examples: http://www.instructables.com/tag/?q=arduino&limit%3Atype%3Aid=on&type%3Aid=on&type%3Auser=on&type%3Acomment=on&type%3Agroup=on&type%3AforumTopic=on&sort=none

Re:Arduino

[sveiki_neliels]

Arduino (and microcontroller platforms in general) and FPGAs are completely different paradigms. Though many FPGAs come with pre-configured soft processors, programming an FPGA comes down to defining a hardware level description of a design. It's all fun and games when you play with schematic design, but without Verilog or VHDL, it is a complete waste. There are decent experimentation systems that have a plethora of features, but the second-year Computer Engineering students I TA have more than enough trouble using FPGAs for simple tasks (even with usable pre-designed IP cores).

I think effectively using a microcontroller would be better suited to this age group. There are definitely levels of complexity you can add as time goes on. Many tools can allow almost drag-and-drop programmability for these devices, you will be able to use C, and when you want to learn more about processors, experience with a decent RISC assembly language will be useful if your son decides to pursue computer-related work later on in life. Combining the microcontroller with an electronics kit means even more uses it can be put to, and is a lot more fun.

ThinkGeek's marketing emails

[bcrowell]

I don't want to say the s-word, but after I bought something from ThinkGeek, they started sending me marketing emails. I don't recall being presented with a choice about whether to opt in or out of marketing emails when I made the purchase. It was UCE (unsolicited commercial email), but you could argue that I had already established a commercial relationship with them. All I can say is that personally, if I buy from an online retailer and then they send me ads via email, my personal decision is not to do business with that retailer again. One very practical reason is that once they send me ads, I'm going to blacklist them in my email filter, and that would make it difficult to do business again. I'm not accusing ThinkGeek of being evil criminals with handlebar moustaches or anything, but it's just like any other business -- if I don't find it pleasant to buy from them, then they've lost my business.

Re:ThinkGeek's marketing emails

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there's a little checkbox where you can disable emails about other products. I've bought plenty of things from ThinkGeek and I have never gotten an 'UCE'. Is pointing-and-clicking really that hard?

nothing teaches physics...

[gandhi_2]

...like a rifle.

seriously. it's how I learned that kinetic energy varies directly to 1/2 the mass and to the square of the velocity.

and how rabbits deal with sucking chest wounds and uncompensated hypovolemic shock.

dealing with sights and optics taught me about angles in degrees and minutes-of-angle and how they work with customay measurements and created triangles of horizontal trajectories. (there's mils for the same thing in metric).

dealing with virticle trajectory taught me about objects falling toward the center of the earth at 1/2 gravity x (time squared) no matter how fast they are going. and how quadrant is measured to compensate for various co-efficient's of drag and velocities/grains of bullets.

plus all the responsibility, maintenance, cleaning, and stuff. it was probably the best thing I got at 13. it sparked my interest in science and showed me how physics and math is integral in EVERYTHING you do.

Geomag

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not cheap, but these are pretty intense toys. You learn a lot about magnetics, geometry, structure, and much much more. By far the best toy I've ever seen. You need a lot of them. Good for all ages. And much stronger and safer than the inferior knockoff brands (like Magnetix).

Don't get all the random panels and stuff; just balls and rods.

You'll be amazed by what some people have built from these things. How tall a tower can you build? How long of an unsupported span? Etc.

my stuff

[digitalhermit]

When I was a kid I enjoyed the Radio Shack electronics kits. I have not seen them recently, but they can be built rather easily with a piece of thin plywood and a bunch of nuts and bolts, plus the actual electronics which can be culled from scrap equipment. There are ample schematics on the web for building anything from simple radios to logic gates to metal detectors. Once they've been prototyped on the kit they can be built for a few dollars worth.

If you want to go the programming route, there are a few cheap boards out there. They're not very powerful, but good enough to run Linux, serve web pages, control lights, etc.. At 13 he's old enough to learn programming too :D

An expensive broken machine, plus a screwdriver!

[gustep12]

I enjoyed two particular things a lot. The first one was any kind of experimentation kit, i.e. for building simple electronic circuits, or a chemistry experimentation set, etc.

However, the other thing that was really a lot of fun and very instructional is being given something valuable that just happens to be broken - but hey, I could fix it after I learned enough about how it works! A good example might be an video projector (be careful with the high voltage and temperature), a cleaning robot that broke down, or any other high tech gadget that cost a fortune yesterday but is only modestly valuable now.

Another suggestion that's cool is to wire up your pet, i.e. with the CAT-CAM (battery operated mini digital camera that snaps one photo every minute and documents where your cat roams), or maybe GPS tracking for your cat or dog. The hardware to do this should be quite cheap now, i.e. just buy a small battery-operated GPS logger on ebay.

Last suggestion: Go to Fry's and buy the toy you would like most, then give it to your kid.

Re:Electronics kits

[j_kenpo]

I'm 30, and I still love my 300 in 1 Electronics Kit I bought from Radio shack like 10 years ago. Bought it because it had a breadboard with basic power inputs so I could use it on other prototypes and easy to assemble external pieces like switches. Been using it again recently to build schematics I find off of various sites online. They have more basic kits that have snap in components. Don't know about these kids, but I would have loved one of those at 13 since I was already soldering and wire wrapping basic circuits.

Microscope? Logic board?

[shbazjinkens]

A microscope was my most beloved science toy when I was young. The low cost ones aren't lab-grade, but they work.

At age 13, the kid is starting to get old enough to do more than just play with gizmos - maybe it's time to start making them? I was building radio-shack springboard circuits when I was younger than that. Maybe an Arduino board would be appropriate - nobody has to know how to program to use it because there are lots of projects online, but it's a great way to get started tinkering with a hands-on implementation of code! I have a boarduino from Lady Ada. It's only about $25, that should leave you some extra $$ to spend on a breadboard, wire and maybe some other parts.

Re:ThinkGeek??

[Z00L00K]

A more interesting approach would be to make sure that there is the "how does this work" question that arises.

By not just having a cool gadget but also having something that has to be figured out how it works then that will tickle the mind and allow for bigger potentials.

Electronic construction from discrete components (transistors, resistors, capacitors and a soldering iron) will be something that can really challenge the mind. A course in electronics is also good. There are special soldering technique courses, but that may come at a later stage.

Gyroscope

[Pig Hogger]

I remember waking up from (then fashionable) tonsil surgery to be given a pull-string gyroscope, over which I went batshit.

DIY ideas...

[tempest69]

1. Pegboard... fantastic for horizontal mount holes.
2. Dowels--- that fit in the pegs..
3. magnets-- get a 25 or 50 pack of small magnets (consider a few with dowel sized holes).
4. mirrors-- minature... harvest a disco ball.
5. string--
6. DC motors.. the dinky cheap kind that come in cheap toys.
7. prisms.. small is fine.. get geometric shapes triangles-- squares.
8. cheap speakers.. harvest a junk clock radio or 8.
9. glue
10 small springs.

Anyway.. with the laser in hand you can do a bunch of stuff with this setup.. Laser-> mirror mounted on spring mounted on speaker will make a neat wall pattern.. then try without spring.
Make a magnet spring-- shock absorber by repelling magnets down a dowel..
Recombine laser light after splitting it with a prism.
Cover the dowels with slurpee straws. and make a pully system.
This rig is expandable, cheap, and involving enough that I'd play with it..

Storm

Re:DIY ideas...

[MikeDirnt69]

Buy him an electronic basics manual, a protoboard and a multimeter and provide any components he would need to build his on toys.

Wiimotes

[jonaskoelker]

I'm probably not one of the first million people to come up with this idea, but a wiimote can be used as a hook to get the target audience interested (if they like it, of course).

• There's the infrared camera. You can use that to teach about light and the visible vs. invisible spectrum. If you have a good lens, or a glass of water, you can bend the light of some infrared source and go into optics.
• There's the speaker, which lets you talk about sound waves. If it ever gets done and I publish it, look out for "wiitones", a program that lets you generate sinus tones with frequencies controlled by pointing the wiimote. Or write one yourself (I recommend SDL for audio: it's simple and portable).
• It runs on batteries. You can talk about electricity and the chemistry of batteries.
• There's a circuit board with some logic. That lets you talk about higher abstraction level electronics, and the engineering wisdom of abstraction.
• There's the accelerometer. That lets you talk about acceleration and Newtonian mechanics. It also lets you talk about how one might build an accelerometer. I think I heard that using conductive springs and measuring the some electric property works. You can talk about springs here if you like.
• It does communication via bluetooth. That lets you talk about radio, and how it's similar to and different from light.
• You can drop it and see that it holds together. Then drop it from a taller height and see that it breaks. Talk about the physics behind it [kinetic energy enters into it].
• If you have two wiimotes and want to find the breaking height of a wiimote on a discrete axis with only one of them breaking, you can talk about dynamic programming.

And you can bring home the point that there's a lot of science made manifest in the engineering around us all the time.

He'll find his own way. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

I heard this great story from a friend of mine; his grandfather sent him a tool box filled with broken clocks. That's it. Best gift ever!

As a kid, I had lots of internal drive; I was into model rockets and building my own toys and even a full-size R2 robot. But the basic foundation which allowed this was my Dad having introduced me to do-it-yourselfmanship. Give your son tools. Heck, set up a work shop in the house, and build things yourself; kids emulate, and plus you'll have fun. My father would re-model rooms and build walls and decks and all kinds of cool stuff. He was really good at it, too, and he'd explain what he was doing while doing it if I asked.

Pre-packaged science toys are neat, and I went through a few of them, but they also stream-line a kid's awareness; make them think that knowledge comes in shrink-wrapped, consumer packaging. Pre-packaged reality is for the sheep, and it teaches a subtle lesson in dependence on the system rather than giving them the confidence to work, literally, outside the box in the real world.

One of the ways my father got my mind ticking was when I started pining for a pinball machine, clearly well beyond my pocket allowance budget. My dad said, "Well, heck. Let's build one."

So we did. And it was lame. --My Dad thought pinball was about trying to launch marbles into little holes. We did build a cool wooden table which was the right shape using a jig-saw, and he came up with a neat spring-loaded plunger, but I wanted electronic bumpers and blinking lights and such. So on my own steam, I visited electronic parts stores in search of various bits and pieces to create my vision. I learned about basic electronics and how to rectify AC current by bugging the shop owners with lots of newbie questions, etc. It led to a half-assed pinball machine, but it was still pretty cool for my age, and I learned a ton. --But none of that would have been possible if my Dad hadn't taught me how to use a soldering iron and power tools. He had given me the confidence to know that humans are smart and that with an inventive mind, you can do almost anything.

If I were you, I'd take your son to public science fairs and rocketry clubs and robotics clubs and whatnot. Stuff to fire the imagination. Also be sure to introduce him to the wonderful world of surplus electronic parts stores.

But above all. . .

Tools.

Buy tools and show him how they work, how to respect them. Build a decent work bench. Set it up with a good, solid vice. Lead by example. Build some awesome projects around the house, and make getting the tools a part of the game. In short, be an empowered geek. While pre-packaged stuff is fine sometimes, never let it dominate. Don't let other people do it for you if you can avoid it, because building stuff yourself is half the fun. This attitude will help your son in life in ways you can't even imagine!

-FL

Think Geek is nothing compared to AS&S

[number6x]

As a youth, all of my snow shoveling and lawn mowing money was spent at The American Science Center on Northwest Highway in Chicago.

It now has a new location and name, American Science and Surplus. This store has all of the pre-packaged gadgety gizmos the commercial science stores have, plus surplus electronic and mechanical equipment to use in more creative projects.

It was the fault of this store that I ended up majoring in Physics. I know many other kids that ended up being engineers and scientists because of the projects that this store supplied the hardware to make. Chemistry, Physics, Biology, electronics, mechanical; whatever your interest this place has the material you need to explore it!