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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?"
""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?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
As I write this the ad under this topic is for the Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set.
I think that should settle it.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
If you hate to admit it, live in denial.
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.
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
Just looking at this tonight: Horizon fuel cell's hydrogen r/c car kit and retrofit for larger models... http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/store/h2go.htm As a kid I loved building my own R/C cars, this would have been amazing to have!
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.
Find free books.
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.
THL phish sticks
As much as I like ThinkGeek, their selection is limited to gadgets. I found that assembling and -- to my parents dismay -- disassembling things are what really grabbed my interest.
I would take a look at the various kits from American Science & Surplus. There are a number of other sites (e.g., Carl's Electronics) which have even more kits, but I haven't ordered from them so I can't say whether they're worthwhile or not. (These days, most of my toys come from DigiKey, and not in kit form.)
Assuming sufficient and sufficiently geeky parental involvement, there are lots of cool things from United Nuclear. http://www.unitednuclear.com/
A collection of the smaller magnets and some ferrofluid are a pretty good combination. Ferrofluid has aproximatly the same danger and potential for mess as old engine oil, so depending on the kid you might need to supervise it. A variety of magnets also add variety to a ROMP set. http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp?eid=EID02&pn=3082172
You might also try throwing some mechanical puzzles at him. One that I particularly like can be found at http://stores.brilliantpuzzles.com/-strse-212/Internal-Combustion-Metal-Puzzle/Detail.bok but there are many.
"It's very open-ended, all-natural, the perfect price -- there aren't any rules or instructions for its use," said Christopher Bensch, the museum's curator of collections. I'm willing to bet that a greener toy doesn't exist.
When I was that age, which was about 10 years ago, I built my first computer. I was also tinkering with the infamous 'bread board' circuit test beds and random resistors and chips that I could get my hands on.
I would have loved to have a subscription to something so amazing as the Make Magazine at that time. It has some amazing bits in it about almost anything that I could ever have wanted to do or make. Besides that, it would have allowed me to find out about some crazier things to do in your own kitchen or garage to make something fun long before I would have played with it at school or college.
All in all, I can't recommend Make Magazine highly enough.
Communism will never work. People LIKE to own things.
it is a great way to get creative and it teaches basic programming skills
Model rockets are still pretty amazing, and pretty cheap. Just keep the engines until you're ready to use them. I would have killed for a radio controlled helicopter as a kid, and they're darned affordable these days.
For video games, Mindrover is still a programming and logic classic.
The ______ Agenda
Yeah, he already said that. Better answers include:
- Kids Electronics Lab
- Eyeclops Microscope
- Commodore 64
- Lego Mindstorms
Those are just a few toys that can be used educationally to learn about science, engineering, and math.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
the very best mechanical- and engineering-oriented building sets are still Fischer Technik (sometimes spelled here with no space). Made in Germany for decades, and still being made with new kits updated all the time, Herr Fischer designed the best engineering building blocks on the market today. They are still being made, and are often used by universities for mechanical and computer engineering projects.
These kits make Lego Technics and Erector building sets -- even the new ones -- look like, well, child's play. But they are not cheap.
You can often find used Fischer Technik kits on ebay, some of them 30 years old, for sale at a good price. Even at 30, if they are not abused they are quite usable. (I know, because I bought some and use them.) Unlike some other building sets, there is no shortage of replacement or add-on parts.
There are sets that go from basic building, like bridges and little toy push cars, to electric motors and pneumatic controls (compressor, air tank, air pistons, etc.!), R/C vehicles, and all the way up to computer control with feedback. The main direct-buy sites in the U.S. are: http://www.fischertechnik.com/ and http://www.studica.com/Fischertechnik/ but don't forget to look on eBay.
You will not be disappointed by the quality.
AND... you might also enjoy this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmYDgncMhXw
I don't know if Radio Shack still sells them, but back in the day before they started pushing cell phones, they were an electronics store, and sold howto booklets and kits for building relatively simple hobbiest electronics. I remember my dad got me one that showed how to build an infrared transmitter/decoder. I won my eighth grade science fair with it showing that it was possible to transmit radio signal through infrared light and convert it back to audio. I think the hillbillies in the town I grew up in might have thought me to be a wizard Anyway, back to the point. It was one of the cooler things I'd ever gotten as far as gadgets come, because it required me to understand how it worked. Simpler projects (if you don't think a 13 year old should be soldering) might include a roll your own AM radio.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
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
When I was a kid I loved my 50-in-One Electronics Kit from Rat Shack. They still make some kits: Electronics Learning Lab although I don't know if a 13-year-old would care as much as a 10-year-old.
Here's their kit category: http://www.radioshack.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=2032398
I see they have one that also includes a Basic Stamp. Or maybe it would better complement an Arduino.
John
If you have a ton of old hard drives laying around, break out the torx drivers and extract the magnets. The mirror-like surface of the platter is interesting, too.
Yeah, but half the fun of obtaining porn at the age of 13 is doing it behind your parents' backs. Getting it in your Christmas stocking takes the fun out of it!
No, for $50 per hour, they only seem to come with their own stockings - and you probably don't want your 13 year old son to have the "extras" he's likely to get at that rate.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Bloody hell, do people actually READ the post before commenting? First someone posted a $150 item when he CLEARLY asked for sub $50 ones, and now this! A suggestion for a laser pointer where he said "For example, a small laser pointer keychain I bought him a couple of years ago still provides tons of entertainment. "
*sigh*
The way that you have described your child is about how I would have been described as a young lad. Since you asked...
I was given an erector set, had my parents understood, my use of it would have called for additions to it, but we didn't do things like that much back then. I have found that Lego technic and Mindstorms/robotics sets would have totally caught my attention back then.
In lieu of those, the old Radio Shack electronics experiments kits were 1000s of hours of fun. I did not then fully understand how a radio transmitter worked, but I did understand that it was possible to make one, they were not magic, and the components were not expensive nor complex things. A rudimentary understanding of logic and electronics formed then. It's all like a puzzle. Puzzle solving has rules so all you need to know is the rules and get some practice.
I was also the kid that took everything apart as soon as I got it so I would understand how it worked.
Looking back, anything that helps your kid understand how stuff works is probably a really good bet. Much of what I worked with allowed me to discover things about mechanical motions, electronics, physics, and math... even though I did not understand that is what I was doing at the time.
Magnets, magnifying glasses, telescopes, and some guidance to understand them faster than just playing around and waiting for school will teach him is the best bet.
In this day and age, you might want to let him help you put a computer together, explaining what he is curious about. No time like the present to start him off on that path.
Basically, everything has an explanation. Explain everything he asks about. I remember at the age of 5 asking why traffic lights had shades over them, then answering my question before he could tell me. For anyone that is inquisitive, explanations are as good as anything else can be, especially if you follow up with tools and toys that help him to build on that knowledge.
I've seen toys that allow you to build things like a double helix strand of DNA etc. but without explanation they are puzzles without rules, and those are no good as you can't understand how to play the game.
There is nothing stopping a child from designing a hybrid engine except knowledge and practice. I find that the Lego robotics kits mixed with technic parts allows you to experience hands-on a lot of mechanical systems, and how they produce motions. Not to sell Lego strongly but there are lots of opportunities there. You can build working engines, cranes, there are even ackerman steering parts. They have a lot of specialty parts that give you a lot of room to play and learn. There is eBay and bricklink for finding parts without having to buy whole sets, so support for continued use/learning is good.
If you can explain magnetism to him, you're probably going to be a very good teacher. That one is tough for people at any age. There is invisible stuff that just works... it's like magic.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I just clicked that link at work! You could have warned me at least!
Budding is not a natural process, even for the loneliest geek.
The Mirage optical illusion is pretty amazing. I have it, and a Levitron, and while they're both really amazing for a while, there's not a lot of stuff to keep doing with them.
Those electronics kits from Radio Shack and other places with the resistors, diodes, etc and little springs and wires to use for breadboarding are pretty cool and educational. If he actually digs into those, it's pretty cheap to buy a real breadboard and a power supply and a bunch of real components and he can start making real stuff. If he graduates beyond the lessons in the book that comes with the electronics kit, pick him up a copy of Horowitz and Hill's The Art of Electronics, and let him get started with real stuff.
I think they're over your price range, but Lego Mindstorms are great.
You can always get him started with elementary computer programming. If "real" languages seem too challenging, HyperCard is great for starting programming, especially since pretty soon you start to find stuff you want to do but can't, and then find out that HyperTalk is a real programming language that you can start adding in piecemeal to your project, gradually learning programming.
If there are local scout troops, building and racing Pinewood Derby cars can be great if you get serious about going for either style or speed.
A basic model rocketry kit can be fun. It's cool to see it launch.
There are lots of cool science related toys/kits/gadgets here.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I know board games don't leap to mind, but check out some of the recent German games.
(I assume you can google these. Trust me, it's worth it)
Settlers of Catan
Carcassonne
Ticket to Ride (extra points for spotting the mistake in the game)
Puerto Rico
San Juan
Yes, these are just games, but they also aren't the garden variety he-with-the-best-luck-wins type of games. Settlers, a little bit, but the rest are intense strategy games. You may not be learning math or physics, but there's just as much value in reading people, long-term planning and anticipating others' actions. Sure, these aren't as tangible, but they're also real-world skills.
I know you've already been through ThinkGeek, but the Cuboro marble sets, if they still have them, continue to fascinate me.
Oh, and magnets. Magnets rock.
One more thing: Old cameras. If he likes to take stuff apart and put it back together, plus learn about optics and light, buy him an old film camera. Look up Canon AE-1 on eBay. Add in a few cheap lens and he'll be able to dissect the camera and examine all the lenses, mirrors, gears and everything. Easily under $50.
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.
Nothing takes the fun out of porn.
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.
just consult this.
Want to improve your life? This guy will show you how!
I think it also might be illegal.
How about:
- A subscription to Make magazine
- A chemistry kit
- A Velleman Electronics kit (he could build a pong game or whatever else catches his interest)
- A robot kit from Parallax.com
- Build a crystal radio with him. Even cooler, build one out of household junk.
- A Digicomp mechanical computer.
Heck, rather than me writing a long list, you should visit the DIY section on my site It should give you a few dozen good ideas. Just be sure to drop me a line if you actually build an ALTAIR 8800, tube amplifier or homebuilt ultralight, though.
The Cucko's Egg
The Dangerous Book for Boys
There are multiple types of geekery, best to satisfy the possibilities.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
For a young geek nothing inspires more than:
- BB gun
- can of gasoline
- old plastic models
- illegal fireworks
- magnifying glass
- bag of army men
- hot wheels
- pile of bricks
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
You might also be able to pick up a pair of cheap binocs for under $50. 7x50s are great for astronomy. The optics won't be anything to write home about and there will be some purple fringing but I have bought usable binocs for under $50. (Note: DO NOT buy a cheap department store telescope. I have seen some nasty nasty rubbish for $50).
You might be able to buy a cheap camera, but it'll be rubbish.
Good gadgets seem to start at around $200. At that price, you can look at a radio scanner, a GPS...something of that nature.. Also you haven't told us how old your son is.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
If he doesn't have one yet. Preferably one with a proper locking blade.
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.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I remember waking up from (then fashionable) tonsil surgery to be given a pull-string gyroscope, over which I went batshit.
This web site is perfect for inquisitive teens:
http://scitoys.com/
It's crazy cool. He shows you how to make your own working spectroscope with a box, a CD, two razor blades, and some tape!
The guy who put up that site has written some actual paper books, so you could give one or more of those. Or, just order some magnets and diffraction gratings and such for building the gadgets, from the catalog:
https://www.scitoyscatalog.com/
I really wish I could have had access to that web site when I was 13. Oh, well... at least I have access now!
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
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
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).
And you can bring home the point that there's a lot of science made manifest in the engineering around us all the time.
In addition: explain how one can build an altimeter from an accelerometer of a known mass by using Newton's laws of gravity. Explain that the wiimote is too coarse-grained to measure the difference between ocean level and the peak of mount everest.
If I remember my calculations right, it might juuuust be feasible to measure the difference between the deepest ocean and the tallest mountain (here on earth, of course), but you need a very steady hand to pick up the difference. It'll be lost in noise.
Drive around to a couple of thrift stores or garage sales and pick up a couple interesting appliances he can take apart, give the boy a box of nuts and bolts and some tools and let him go to town.
YMMV, but when I was that age, returning home to find a new appliance on my workbench was like a tiny Christmas.
Buy a set of small tools ( including all the 'security' type screwdriver bits), and get a load of dead consumer electronics from friends & neighbours etc. and encourage him to take stuff apart, figure out how it works, try to fix stuff etc. A subscription to Make magazine would also be good.
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
Have you looked at a cold soldering iron? I find it a little annoying to work with, but I keep one in my woodshop, because one thing you don't want to have in a room filled with wood shavings is something with a temperature of over 500 degrees that takes more than a second to cool down. Might be just the thing for child. ThinkGeek stocks them.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/giftsunder20/69d3/
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
Mohandas Gandhi
Ghandi used non-violence against the British because the Brits were basically moral people, and the strategy was clearly successful.
He knew quite well that non-violence was an unwise strategy in many real circumstances.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I liked that story about the Commodore 64, and the kid learning to write his first BASIC programs. Now he has a skill that is actually employable (whether you write BASIC, Fortran, C, or VHDL, it's all basically the same). He just needs to keep practicing.
I learned programming on my own without my parents help. I was self-motivated; I don't know why? I guess I just wanted to see what images I could make the Commodore flash up on the screen. Eventually I lost interest in programming, and became more curious how the hardware actually work (how does a SID make sound?), and started devouring all the tech manuals I could find.
The key I think is to instill that same self-motivation/self-learning process to the next generation; how to do that is a mystery. I suspect it requires an innate curiosity instilled from birth.
TRIVIA:
Voyagers 1 and 2 are still alive and in daily communication with NASA: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/profiles_dsn .html - Amazing! Who says old 70s tech is not useful? ;-)
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
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!