Just in time for the holidays ...
Faculty and staff in Purdue University's College of Engineering have come up with a holiday gift guide that can help engage children in engineering concepts.
The "Engineering Gift Guide" was developed through the INSPIRE Institute for Pre-College Engineering, a part of the School of Engineering Education.
It features toys, games, books, movies and apps for mobile devices for a variety of ages. In addition to the selected items, the guide includes suggestions on finding other engineering-themed gifts.
"It's important to introduce engineering to children at a very young age – even before they reach kindergarten," says Monica Cardella, associate professor of engineering education and INSPIRE director. "One way to achieve this is simply putting a puzzle together or playing with building blocks and talking with the child about what they want to design, what ways they can accomplish that, and who or what could use their creation.
http://phys.org/news/2014-11-gift-parents.html
http://inspire-purdue.org/parent-materials
(Score: 3, Funny) by fadrian on Monday December 01 2014, @12:45PM
If you wanted to give an actual budding STEMworker something that would be indicative of his (or her) probable future life, give him (or her) an application for food stamps and a pink slip. Oh, wait, that was for everyone, not just budding scientists.
Why, yes... I am feeling cynical today.
That is all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday December 01 2014, @01:22PM
piss off the consumerist corporations by going to flea market / rummage sale type place and buying old/broken electronics and mechanical things and having the kids tear them apart to the smallest part.
As a kid I tore apart all kinds of old radios for parts, and even disassembled a kitchen stove down to almost nothing. The mechanical timer was pretty interesting to figure out. I kept the cool radio parts and used them in experiments. I built my own speaker enclosures and stuffed the reclaimed speakers into them. I never wanted for aluminum heatsink material.
Once the kids get a little older they can make some dough repairing and selling stuff not just shredding it. I repaired and sold radios, especially walkmen, especially damaged headphone jacks. That's not going to pay the mortgage when you're 40, but when you're 14 it beats the hell out of mowing lawns.
My kids are fascinated by taking apart VCRs. My son is just barely old enough to have watched a VCR tape, but my daughter is too young to "get" what the machine is for. They like taking apart DVD players too, the springy laser suspension always gets them...
In my experience you can get "a" engineer without taking stuff apart, but all the "good" engineers have some kind of history with tearing stuff apart.
If nothing else, you can learn good taste by pure osmosis by looking at good stuff.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Monday December 01 2014, @02:07PM
This. My EE-to-be teenager loves fixing and playing with broken/discarded bits of industrial electronics I scrounge or find for sale, and he's already a better technician that most of the maintenance people at my plant. The Purdue faculty are spot-on in advocating the augmentation of education with practical application.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday December 01 2014, @03:32PM
Same here. When I was young my father would lug home all sorts of interesting electronic junk he would find. The best was a video control panel he found next to the dumpster of a local college. My mother also had no objection to me bringing home junk (TV's radios VCR's etc) to play with. My parents even bought a shed for me to house all of my junk and make a little workshop. A friend and I ran electric to it, wired it up and set up shelves. We then roamed the neighborhood on trash day looking for all sorts of electronic trash. Garage sales were also a big destination and we would find all sorts of cool stuff for next to nothing. We found tons of cool stuff, much of it was in working condition and simply tossed because it was no longer needed. I remember we found a mint condition Radioshack 100W mono PA amp in the trash. Why they threw it out is beyond me, especially since it was like new and retailed for something like $200-300. We sold it to a local bar for $100 to replace their burnt out jukebox amp. Score!
My parents supported me in my curiosity. They let me bring home trash, explore, play in the dirt, play with fire, and play with dangerous electricity. They made sure I understood the dangers, and were confident enough to let me experiment as long as they were within earshot. No line voltages, only batteries when I was young. Back when 6&12V lantern cells were commonly available and Radioshack was the place to go to buy parts and Forrest Mims books. As I got older they were confident to let me experiment by myself without supervision and work with line voltages. And that was around 10-11 years old! Another important thing was to buy lots of books on the subject. If my father saw a used book sale he would rummage through looking for interesting books that I would like. I still have a few shelves of books at my mothers house.
Just let your kids explore. I remember my mother bought this oil paint set for my brother because he wanted it. So she let him experiment with painting. She must have dropped $200 in art and paint supplies in one day. It did not unleash an inner picasso nor anything frame worthy but it let him explore. And that is the most important aspect of parenting.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday December 01 2014, @08:01PM
All I ever got was old broken medical equipment .
In all seriousness I had lots of fun tearing apart all that old stuff my dad brought home from the hospital. We got old TVs, intercoms, fans, a wide assortment of old medical equipment, even some old computers. Lots of it got repaired, lots got taken apart for scrap or to be cannibalized to fix other stuff.
Letting kids play and explore their world is a great teacher. Mine are still young (6 and 3) so things like getting up close to giant machines is still really cool to them so seeing and explaining how a 240 ton dump truck [roadsideamerica.com] works as you stand under it great. They also like going to things like the local threshing show [nowthenthreshing.com] and seeing those old tractors and stationary steam and internal combustion engines in action. I am probably a bit to willing to entertain some of their questions at times as I did construct a more or less functional (no clutches, torque converter, or valve body) automatic transmission with planetary gear sets out of Legos (this is a pain) since my oldest asked how do gears work in car transmissions. The manual transmission was much easier but my car at the time had an automatic so he wanted to know how it worked.
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(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday December 01 2014, @09:43PM
Thats the way to do it. Broad exposure. I think the contrast of the old and new makes for a good understanding and appreciation of how things work. From the primal hit-and-miss gas engines to todays precise computer controlled engines that are a fraction of the weight and tens or hundreds of times more powerful.
As a kid I loved trucks I always had tonka toys models, replicas etc. We used to travel to Vermont a lot during the winter and my father made sure to stop off at Depot 22, a truck stop along the NY thruway and rt 22. I loved it and to this day I still had trucks on the brain. So much that I went out and bought a 1961 Mack B61 semi tractor. Still working on it. I fell into the restoration underestimation trap like so many other n00bs: you don't realize how much money and time are needed until it's sitting in your yard. Still a fun project, save for the frozen grade 8 bolts that are just about impossible to remove.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday December 02 2014, @02:27PM
Vehicle restoration, a great time and money sink. I have an old MG midget that is about halfway restored and has been that way since I had kids so I know the feeling. I was lucky and grew up in a car culture working with my dad restoring his vehicles so at least I knew what I was in for.
Have you tried torching the nuts on the end of the bolt? Heat them up nice and hot (get them nice and red) with a propane brazing torch, spray with WD-40 to cool. They usually come off pretty easy at that point or that has been my experience. The trick is to heat the nut as quickly and as evenly as possible while not heating the bolt. Just realize that you will have to replace that nut and bolt after this. If that doesn't work you can always use the Sawzall, or drill and tap depending on application.
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(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday December 02 2014, @09:08PM
Here is my issue: The 5th wheel, the trailer coupler, is mounted to a long 1/2" steel plate with two flanges that hug the frame rails and are secured by seven fine threaded grade 8 cap screws (or bolts, same difference) on each side. Now I have succeeded in removing the nuts from two of the bolts with a torch but the bolts will not turn or push out, I even tried applying 3 tons via a special long stroke jack and they didn't budge. They must have had an interference fit on the bolts because the bolts are frozen in about 3/4" deep of 5/16 steel frame rail, a 1/4" reinforcement channel and the flange. Another issue is the air tanks are mounted under that plate to the frame rails and 5 of the nuts on each side are covered by the tanks! So I have to figure out a way to get the 5th wheel plate off without destroying the frame rails or air tanks. Plus that plate must weigh in at around 300-400 lbs with the 5th wheel, which is not road worthy and will be scrapped. Big job, thats for sure.
However, I managed to use a punch to transfer a nice centered hole into the socket of one screw and drill a pilot hole. I then ground the head off and used the pilot hole as a guide for a mag drill and a 1/2 bit to drill out the bolt. So I managed to remove ONE bolt. Took a while to drill that thing out. So I have to do that for the other 13 bolts and I don't have enough clear frame because of suspension components so its a big hand drill from there on in.
I know a guy who is an MG maniac. He has a small warehouse for his business (that is what he tells his wife) but he told me 90% of that space is full of MG's, about 9 or 10 in total. Only a few are restored, I think 3 or 4 of them. I forget which model, but he managed to stuff an LS4 into one of them. He calls it the sleeper. I also heard he just dropped 50 grand on two more, one restored and one complete project car in pieces from the same owner. Dude has more money than time.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday December 01 2014, @09:08PM
There are some great stories in this thread. (Somewhat) Unfortunately, I was turned away from some of this. My dad used to work on the car and had me watch him instead of help him. He then didn't understand why I got bored and didn't want anything to do with cars. I eventually got my own computer and I was on my way to exploring things. Hence, I became a programmer.
One of my brothers took a different route. He had the same problems with learning mechanical stuff about cars from our dad. After high school, he eventually went to a tech school and made a deal with the other guys who knew a lot more about cars. Since he was a brain, he offered to help them out with their math and English classes if they helped him learn the mechanical and electrical stuff so he could become a grease monkey. They agreed and it was a win-win for everyone. My brother eventually became a great mechanic, then went to engineering school and became a great engineer. Worked out pretty well for both of us.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday December 02 2014, @01:27PM
In the end your fathers interests weren't your interests. It happens all the time. But at least he tried and that was the important thing.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Tuesday December 02 2014, @04:57PM
Actually, I did have an interest in fixing cars until he took me out there to work on it about a dozen times and I got to do zero. I got annoyed and decided I had better things to do. For a while, I wanted to be a mechanical engineer. Had he allowed me to work on the cars, I may have had a better understanding of mechanical things and done better at the university. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.
You are right, though. He wasn't perfect, but he did the best he could and I give him huge points for that. I was sometimes angry at him as a teenager, but for the most part we get along pretty good these days.
The point I was trying to make was that my father didn't support my brother or I in the mechanical world. I think it harmed us. My brother found a way to fix that. I never did.
I don't mean to sound like I'm whining. I thought it was just an interesting counter story to the other guys in this thread.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday December 02 2014, @08:47PM
Ah, I understand now. Yea having someone learn by watching vs. getting your hands dirty is borderline torture.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Monday December 01 2014, @01:49PM
As much as I love Purdue, and their engineering program, this guide is pretty cheesy and basic. Also, it isn't very applicable for kids of all ages as the summary proclaims. There is nothing I saw that would be appropriate for my 14 year old, other than a chess set, of which we have plenty...
I was hoping for a bit more when I saw the headline. This doesn't really seem exciting enough to me to have made SN, really...
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(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday December 01 2014, @03:40PM
That Laser maze and gravity maze would keep me (a 31 year old) entertained for a while : )
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(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday December 01 2014, @03:00PM
My daughter just had her 4th birthday, and received a few sets of "big Lego" (which, ironically, is much smaller than the Duplo & Megablocks she had up until now) which is of course a great educational toy and worthy of any geek's wishlist. She was thrilled with them, and I was thrilled to see her playing with it. Sitting and playing Lego with her pretty much made my day. Lego is way cooler now than it was in my day. She was given the Lego Junior sets, which are designed with easier builds and instructions with young beginners in mind. (Only some of the sets were the pink princess/ domestic themed ones aimed at girls. I haven't yet decided if they are sexist and patronising, shrewd and empowering, or all of the above simultaneously. She seems to like them, but also liked the yellow digger.)
However, it seems my Lego nostalgia had allowed me to let something slip out of memory - frustration. More than once she ended up throwing down the Lego and getting upset, because it wouldn't do what she wanted it to do, or it would all fall apart as she tried to stick down a part on an unstable foundation. The moment it happened hundreds of similar experiences flooded back to me, when I'd spend ages building some ambitious project only to have it crumble to bits in my hands, or to discover I lacked the critical pieces to finish it. Now I understand why most Lego sets are aimed at ages 6 and up.
I don't want to discourage anyone from introducing their kids to Lego or other educational toys. Not even sure why I brought this up, except to say that toys like this can be very challenging, and kids may need support to use them. You also need to be careful that you don't over-reach, and end up turning your kid against the toys you'd like them to enjoy.
Of course I gave her some pointers, and gently encouraged her to try again. She'll come back to it, and hopefully she'll eventually develop the patience and skills required to really enjoy her Lego and learn from it.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Monday December 01 2014, @03:57PM
I'm in complete agreement with you. I have a 3 year old, and in my own exuberance in wanting to play with Lego again, I think I got it for him when he is still too young, as I'm with you on those break down moments. I like to think I've used it as way to teach him that failing is ok, and it is good to try again. But you can only push that so far at that age. He is now at a stage when he sometimes looks forward to a build failing and gets a laugh out of it, to the point I think he has been making things specifically to watch them fail, but sometimes emotion pushes through and disappointment gets the better of him.
Thanks for sharing, it is always good to hear others are running into similar struggles :)
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday December 01 2014, @04:04PM
It seems like a lot of cool stuff is that way. I love programming but the reward must exceed the effort. Too much frustration and i'll move on to something that looks more rewarding. Not suggesting to quit when things get hard though. You can usually tell what the payoff will be. Being stubborn and just finishing something i am no longer enjoying is something reserved for work : )
Hope your daughter has some rewarding lego builds! Maybe posting pictures of her builds or something like that will increase her reward?
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(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday December 01 2014, @04:35PM
> Maybe posting pictures of her builds or something like that will increase her reward?
Nice idea, I'll bear that in mind. Thanks.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday December 01 2014, @08:26PM
My youngest one is 3 and with an older brother who he watched play with them didn't have that problem. I would think that seeing how things go together helps a lot when first starting out as my oldest one had way more problems with Legos initially than my youngest one did. They both understand how to make fairly structurally sound creations even if they aren't perfect they are good enough in most cases. The problem in my house is my wife doesn't like that the Legos are very rarely put together into their proper sets and instead exist in various states of diss-assembly and recreations. My big concern is with lost pieces since they end up everywhere and lots of the parts are small enough to be missed when picking up so are likely to get eaten by the vacuum.
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