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Merry Christmas - Be an Erector Engineer!
theodp writes: More than 50 years ago, lucky kids found an Automatic Conveyor Erector Set under the Xmas tree. And while President Obama lamented last year that kids — including his own — were done a disservice by an educational system that failed to introduce computer science concepts 'with the ABCs and the colors', Radio Shack advised 'Parents Who Care' to put a TRS-80 under the tree for their kids to program way back in 1978. So, to bring things up-to-date, what are the hot tech/science gifts that Santa brought children today?
Snap Circuits. Yeah, baby.
By the time I was five or six I had an electric train set that my Father taught me how to put together and wire up each time I would use it. I wasn't much, if any, older when I had a chemistry set with chemicals in it that would get you on a terrorist watch list if you bought them today. Before I was ten my Father had taught me how to solder and I got a very nice soldering iron when I was ten and used it to assemble my first radio receiver kit. It used vacuum tubes, which took hundreds of volts to work. What would the parent police think or do today to the parents of a ten year old who was given a 300 degree C soldering tool and left alone to use it to build a radio with high voltages. Yes, I also had an Erector set, and toy guns and latter a BB gun and all of the other things that made kids from the 1940's and 1950's into the engineers and scientists that got us to the moon in 1969.
To learn you have to do and try and sometimes you fail and sometimes things might have some risk but not to try and not to do is a complete dead end for society.
The most hopeful thing I see on the horizon is the Maker Movement, although I think that sometimes it tends to candy coat real learning. Learning is not always easy or fun but LEARNING that is is almost always worthwhile and enriching is one of the most important lessons anyone can have and the earlier the better.
I'm also one of us that remember dicking about with electronics and designing/building/programming early computers at home...
That culture of exploration seems to have died with us.
I have a 10 year old son. Neither him or any of his friends or school mates are interested in anything that isn't completely pre-packaged, comes with full instructions, and is 100% convenient. If anything requires any creative thinking or even any slight effort on his part, it just gets left unfinished in a drawer.
Sadly I think thanks to the sick liberal values in society and promoted by mass media, this level of laziness and total absence of scientific curiosity is completely typical of the current generation of at least middle class US kids now, and simple market demand explains the complete lack of electronic sets, chemistry sets etc in toy stores these days.
I'd up mod you if I had points. I have been an EE for 20 years, and don't think I will steer my kids into it. Same for my wife who is also an engineer. We like our work (the technology), the people we work with, but hate our employer. The keep hammering for more billable hours, cutting benefits, etc. I have about had it. If I didn't have young kids I'd quit tomorrow and try working for myself. Those who clamor for more STEM are not STEM workers.
I dislike snap circuits because the block units tend to roll up too much of the complexity making them more magical and less electrical. I liked my ancient electronics kit that had discrete components with springs that clamped the wires you used to make connections. What was good about that was you could make errors or try shorting things out or removing things and see what changed. Plus they included some fun stuff like high voltage shock circuits you could build.
Now the thing is I could be wrong about preferring discrete components. These days no one at all builds analoc circuits from scratch. You want a thermometer, well no worries, no need to bias a themistor or measure the voltage on a reversed biased junction. No just buy a thermometer chip with an SPI data bus and connect 3 wires to your arduino. Simple! And absurdly that hideously complex way of making a thermometer turns out to be cheaper and easier than the discrete component approach. No need ot learn any analog electronics.
SO maybe I'm just old fashioned in liking discrete components. kids won't ever use that stuff, the magic bits will all be rolled up for them into block elements they can snap together on their SPI bus.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Same here, I've worked in EE for 25 years, as a technician at first. I don't see much of a future for it here in Montreal, I'm lucky I found a job here, it's off the island but at least I'm working in my field. At the same numerical wage as 15 years ago, minus the benefits, and with no vacation time except for the legal minimum. I worked the 24th. All day. I slept the 25th because I also work evenings doing contract work.. so I can make enough money to pay the immoral taxes in Quebec. (I made the mistake of going on unemployment last year, oops, the province considers this a revenue so it wants even more taxes from me.)
I wonder how the kids at Bombardier feel these days, with their bosses getting welfare to the tune of a billion dollars US yet shipping the jobs to Mexico.
Sure, just study more... What kind of life is this?
All I'm doing is running in place to pay taxes with the same salary as 15 years ago.
Mostly random stuff.
I read that as Erection Engineer but I'm mildly buzzed from a couple of drinks. That's an unusual state for me. I have an excuse. They are all being a bit loud, getting to know each other, and getting drunk so I have a minute. So, today's novella...
I had an Erector set, several, as a child. My kids had one too but it was not nearly as much fun to play with but they both have fond memories of it. It's kind of sad for kids these days. I didn't have one but my older brother had a chemistry set that had all sorts of things they'd never even dream of letting a kid have in today's litigious society. It had a variety of acids, all sorts of stuff. I'm pretty sure there was radioactive stuff in there as well but that might have been a different science kit? Maybe Little Joey's First Bomb Making Kit or something? I dunno. It's been a minute since I was that age.
At any rate... Yeah, some of the toys are kind of cool. We used to buy black powder and use our empty BB gun's CO2 cartridges. We'd fill them up, tamp 'em down, throw in a waterproof fuse, and then cause hate and discontent with various inanimate things. We stomped through the woods with rifles and spent hours shooting cans and other targets. We had chemistry sets and Ka-Bar knives. We had Lincoln Logs. Okay, those were pretty dumb. We had potato guns, paint can dust bombs, machetes, hatchets, saws, gasoline and a book of matches...
Meh, none of us died or anything and we learned lots of things. Sure, we sometimes got hurt and broke bones skateboarding, fighting, jumping off stuff onto other stuff, etc... But no, we all managed to make it to adults.
Somewhere, between what I was allowed to do and what kids are allowed to do now - there's gotta be a more interesting and educational way. We learned a lot by having fun. Yes, we got hurt sometimes. Shit happens, you know? I had rifles and pistols at my school - like my own. They stayed in an unlocked cabinet in the office. We had a ski slope too. Hell, we had an ice arena. But we also had an observatory and a lab with things like chemicals with a MSDS and Bunsen burners. We had evaporation hoods and PPE. Nobody died. If someone got hurt, we cleaned up the mess and they went to the hospital - and we didn't get hurt at all in the lab. For few days we all went and got glass blowing lessons in case we were eventually going to need to blow our own glass. (No, I didn't do very well but we all got to blow a beaker and some tubing and some other crap, fucked if I know, I'm not a chemist.)
We played rugby and basically beat the hell out of each other - it was a good way to get over being pissed at your roommate. We sneaked off into the woods at night and smoked and drank out behind the Away team goal on the soccer field. I should also add that I ended up at this school because a friend of mine and I (we were pretty young) set his dad's garage on fire. So... That turned out better than I expected but that's besides the point. Where was I?
Oh yeah, it has to suck to not be allowed to do stuff like that now. If you could put it in your mouth, we did. If you could roll in it, we did. If you could take it apart, we did. If it was broken and you wanted it to work, you figured out how to fix it. (That applies to bones, feelings, hearts. and bargains.) We learned stuff, whatever we needed. There was a drive, a need. We don't need to let them learn those things any more. It's like we're afraid to let them learn by making mistakes until they get it right, I guess.
I dunno if I'm being a crotchety old man or if there's really that much difference. My kids were pretty driven to learn. I hold high standards. They don't have to meet them but I appreciate them trying and will love 'em even when they fuck up. 'Cause ya gotta. You have to fix broken things and if you don't know how then you have to learn.
And that's kind of where I was going with that. I think. It really must be sad to have a young kid these days unless you can still get away with allowing them to get an education. How do they learn t
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
For kids who are into robotics (or parents who want to get their kids interested in robotics) LEGO Mindstorms is a good place to start.
Its easy to assemble, usable with all the other LEGO bricks out there and easy to program with the LEGO supplied development environment.
Plus the programmable brick runs Linux under the hood and every single thing running on the brick itself is open source (as far as I know anyway). The brick even has bluetooth for talking to the outside world.