Depending on age this might be a bit advanced. At a young age ( under 10 years old ) kids need to have shorter timelines for completion/reward than a stick-built RC flyer.
My earliest tinkers were paper airplanes. Find a good book on paper airplane construction -- cheap and easy, and lets kids learn about the basics of control surfaces, center of lift/center of gravity, etc. Then move on to toy-level rubber powered planes which are cheap, but require some knowledge of trim, etc., and often need to be repaired.
Oddball things like mousetrap cars are fun and can be built in an afternoon.
Back in the mid 80s Lego made some fantastic kits under the series name "Expert Builder". They had gears and mocked-up piston engines and such. Can't seem to find them today, I'm not sure there's an analogous complexity-level kit today ( Lego seems either pure toy or highly complex these days, less middle-ground ).
The only mistake my dad made was giving me stuff that was over my head (wacky german kit-thing called Logix-Cosmos). Sometimes it made it seem more like work.
Ultimately, if your kids see you engrossed in something, it will drive their curiosity. So in some ways pick a project that they would be able to handle, start doing it in their view, and if they join, be very happy.
A sense of logic, ethics and pride in engineering usually prevent true geeks from getting rich. I've seen good engineers get the MBA, get another 50% in salary, and hate that their jobs require them to stop adding value, and sometimes even use their authority to someone else's detriment.
If they don't feel bad about all that, they're not really geeks, and probably never were.
Further, there is a BIG difference between a top-school and so-so or bottom-rung MBA programs. You're more likely to find geeks in the top programs (where you have to be smart to get in), and these folks will usually do a lot better in their careers, because they're networked with the other top geeks.
At my last job the top execs almost always had multiple patents and PhDs in EE and related areas. They were real geeks, but sometimes not so good at dealing with the parent company & board, which was NOT helmed by geeks.
It's really a shame for F/OSS that, time and time again, there is such a huge duplication of effort and half-assed half-finished projects lying around in the junkyard of the Open Source cemetery. Have you ever worked on any proprietary systems? There is far more redundant, half-assed, half-finished crap in the commercial/internal development area compared to FOSS. Mainly because company A doesn't have any way to research or re-use company B's timesheet/project tracking/workflow/AR/CRM software...
Slashdot Mirror
Depending on age this might be a bit advanced. At a young age ( under 10 years old ) kids need to have shorter timelines for completion/reward than a stick-built RC flyer. My earliest tinkers were paper airplanes. Find a good book on paper airplane construction -- cheap and easy, and lets kids learn about the basics of control surfaces, center of lift/center of gravity, etc. Then move on to toy-level rubber powered planes which are cheap, but require some knowledge of trim, etc., and often need to be repaired. Oddball things like mousetrap cars are fun and can be built in an afternoon. Back in the mid 80s Lego made some fantastic kits under the series name "Expert Builder". They had gears and mocked-up piston engines and such. Can't seem to find them today, I'm not sure there's an analogous complexity-level kit today ( Lego seems either pure toy or highly complex these days, less middle-ground ). The only mistake my dad made was giving me stuff that was over my head (wacky german kit-thing called Logix-Cosmos). Sometimes it made it seem more like work. Ultimately, if your kids see you engrossed in something, it will drive their curiosity. So in some ways pick a project that they would be able to handle, start doing it in their view, and if they join, be very happy.
If they don't feel bad about all that, they're not really geeks, and probably never were.
Further, there is a BIG difference between a top-school and so-so or bottom-rung MBA programs. You're more likely to find geeks in the top programs (where you have to be smart to get in), and these folks will usually do a lot better in their careers, because they're networked with the other top geeks.
At my last job the top execs almost always had multiple patents and PhDs in EE and related areas. They were real geeks, but sometimes not so good at dealing with the parent company & board, which was NOT helmed by geeks.