I was hoping with so many amateur electricians on this site, that someone could give me some advice on a gift for my 9-year old. I want an electronics kit and/or books that go a little beyond the typical "stick wire here get radio" type of thing. Something that actually teaches circuits, voltage, motor, perhaps electromagnets etc... My 9 year old is a bright geekly-type, so can probably handle material written at the middle school level as long as it only has basic math - no Algebra yet. I'm hoping to get 30 hours of educatainment out of it. Any advice?
Well from what I remember when I was a kid, the "build your own radio kits" from Radio Shack are one of the best begining science things to start off with (it doesn't have a motor, but it does go over electromagnetism pretty well). I remember that my parents then got me a chemistry set...which wound up being pretty limited for truely practical experiments. I don't know what current day kits are like, but they probably have minimal instructions these days. I would think that's an even better reason for finding out which component is which via the internet. I know some poo poo internet sources, but I've found for the more ecclectic science topics, web sources aren't actually that bad for getting a survey.
Go get a copy of Nuts and Volts magazine. There are ads for a few companies that make these "beginner" kits. I forgot the name of them, and don't have a copy here to reference them for you, but I do know that they exist.
Take a look at the Arduino ([FONT="]Arduino - HomePage[/FONT]) open source system. It's inexpensive (~$50 to get started), all software (mostly Java) is free, hundreds of inexpensive add-on HW/SW packages (called shields) and my students love it. JeffD
I had one something like this: Lafayette 150-In-1 Electronic Kit when I was a kid. It taught circuits well.
I know Arduino very well, and I have been working my own designed circuit using AVR controller. I'm sure 4-year old can run "hello world" program on the mbed, but I think it is very difficult to run a program on Arduino by 4-year old. Ken@Japan
Thanks all for the advice - some good ones, but in the end, I went with the electro-gadget 200: Edu Science Electro-Gadget 200 - Toys R Us - Toys "R" Us Convenient snap-on connections for tiny people. The other kits were heavy on ICs, which seemed a bit advanced at this point - right now, an IC would be an incomprehensible black box that does cool stuff. Maybe after he finishes the 200 experiments in this one, he'll be ready for some of the more advanced kits (like that radio shack one and arduino seemed cool...).
You can also check out MadLab Electronic Kits in the future... A lot of small, focused kits with some background, circuit diagrams included, etc. they're great if you can sit with your kid and go over some of the concepts with him!
