Kids these days

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_netcom.com>
Date: Fri Sep 18 21:00:31 1998

   Slightly off-topic, yet topical...

  I have, over the years taught many ham-radio license classes to
hundreds of people, a good percentage of them kids, generally from
age 10-11 and up. Apart from the required information relevant to
the actual FCC questions.. I stress science, technology, and D-I-Y
projects.. from the simplest 555-based LED flasher to working radio
sets and computer interfacing. I go to ham radio swap meets and buy
up all the old scopes and meters I can find, and then make them
available to kids for the price of promising to *use* the gear.

  I like to use junk printers for robot supplies, because the
control and drive electronics are already there, as well as an easy
way of making them move via print commands sent to a parallel or
serial port of any computer. Sam and those of you who are robot
aficianados... I have seem some pretty fancy devices made up of the
steppers and servos from old unwanted printers... especially the
big old wide carriage dot-matrix units from 10 or more years ago,
whose motors were big and pwerful.

 And there are a few young scientists left out there, in and among
the Beavis And Butthead clones thronging our schools. Sigh. Don't
get me started....


  Cheers

John
Received on Fri Sep 18 1998 - 21:00:31 BST