If you ever want to pique a kid’s interest in technology, it is best to bring out something simple, yet cool. There was a time that showing a kid how a crystal radio could pull in a radio station from all the way across town fit the bill. Now, that’s a yawner as the kid probably carries a high-tech cell phone with a formidable radio already. Your latest FPGA project is probably too complicated to grasp, and your Arduino capacitance meter is–no offense–too boring to meet the cool factor criterion.
There’s an old school project usually called an “electromagnetic train” that works well (Ohio State has a good write up about it as a PDF file). You coil some bare copper wire around a tubular form to make a tunnel. Then a AAA battery with some magnets make the train. When you put the train in the tunnel, the magnetic forces propel the train through the tunnel. Well, either that or it shoots it out. If that happens, turn the train around and try again. There’s a few of these in Internet videos and you can see one of them (from [BeardedScienceGuy] below.
This isn’t a new idea, but the Ohio State instructions are well suited for use in a classroom or just to work with an intellectually curious kid. Since this is simple enough, you can work with the kids (or kid) to actually build the device or let them build several in groups.
Getting kids interested in tech might be the ultimate hack. If you are looking for other ideas, you can try an electromagnetic egg drop (or a more traditional one) or a little pretend robot exercise.
Filed under: classic hacks
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