How does anyone learn electronics these days?

I don't know what it's like to be ten nowadays, that's how old I was when I got interested in electronics, but I think some of the issue is that we are much older, and can no longer imagine being young.

Back then, 1970, there wasn't much in the way of electronics around the house. I didn't lust after much of it, I simply was interested in science, and somehow electronics became interesting to me. Over all these years, I've never built much in the way of finished projects, but have spent lots of time breadboarding things and trying things out. I learned a lot about the world using electronics to learn about learning, and as a vantage point to view the world. If nothing else, I don't have the fear of electronics that many people do have, and certainly some simple repair things that most people wouldn't even think of tackling are just automatic to me.

But 36 years later, my interests have changed and no, electronics isn't so appealing to me now.

But that's irrelevant, because the issue is the ten year old. I'd like to think the same sense of accomplishment I had when I finally built something that worked, when I finished off grade 6 likely having a ham license (I took the test in May of 1972 as soon as the rule here in Canada that you had to be over 15 went away, failed the code test, retook it in June a few days before the end of school but the results weren't back until school finished), when I was learning things that weren't being covered in school, and when I learned the morse code, would still apply to a ten year old today. Electronics was never a popular hobby, and the ones who pursue it are likely less interested in the popular. None of this has changed, even if morse code is even less relevant today than it was in 1972, it is still an accomplishment for someone who is still pretty young.

Babies are explorers, with pretty much everything coming to them through experience. But once they hit school, experience becomes secondary, while they learn to do something, rather than do something to learn. Being ten years old is nearly infinitely older than being Age 0, but it's still pretty early on the curve. Learning is still a significant factor in their lives, while it's pretty easy to push the boundaries.

I suppose some things have changed. But I also think that somehow something else changed, so the kids stopped coming, which resulted in a gap of few new kids coming in. So those who remain are much older, and puzzling over how to attract kids to the hobby. And while I don't have an answer to it, I truly do believe that it's merely a matter of marketing rather than competition with the perceived competition (ie the internet, CD players, video games and such). Once the focus is on the competition, it's about competing rather than making a strong case for the hobby.

The hobby magazines have pretty much disappeared in North America. I don't think kids had any affect on that happening, they were part of the readership but the readership was varied enough that it wasn't just aimed at them. (Indeed, it can be argued that reading the hobby magazines meant early entry into the adult world, when the rest of the class at school was still reading "Jack & Jill" and "Highlights for Children".) But whatever the reason for the magazines to disappear, the result is that there's nothing much on the newsstand to lure kids in. When I was young, much of what I learned was from the magazines, and it was easy to get the fifty cents to get another magazine, far easier than getting the money together to buy a book. That sort of thing is gone. Maybe the children's libraries no longer have beginner books about electronics.

But the key is to figure out how to talk to the young, how to show your love of the hobby (especially as it was when you were ten years old), convey the sense of wonderment and accomplishment. And only then, and only if the kids yawn, do you know there is a real problem.

Michael

Bill, you can still buy those old 15V batteries, but it takes more than a little research to find a mail order source that can supply one. (I just replaced on in my Triplett, but am not going to hold my breath for when I need another maybe 10 years from now. IIRC, Newark Electronics was able to supply it, but it cost something like $20.)

You're correct, now that ham radio has essentially gone the way of the dodo, very few people lean basic electronics today. The best starting point remains the ARRL Handbook, and the followed by Horowitz and Hill's, "The Art of Electonics", but few people other than serious hobbiests bother to study material at this very important basic level.

I can share with you as a fact that many EE college graduates today don't have an understanding of basic electronics, except perhaps kids from MIT, Cal Tech, and similar places. Still, when I was a kid back in the 1950s, your average radio and TV repairman has a more in dept understanding of the fundamental than some college graduates have today. Still I'm not complaining, because this vacuum of practical knowledge is precisely what creates a consulting market for some of old farts to retired from the industry close to ten years ago. Some dark clouds have a silver lining.

Harry C.

Bill Shymanski wrote:

In article , snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (known to some as snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com) scribed...

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Hamateur radio gone the way of the dodo?

That's news to me. It's very active in this area (Washington state), and there are more than enough tinkerers left to keep it interesting.

Yes, it's become tied in with the Internet, in the form of Echolink and APRS. However, these are just tools. They can add utility to hamateur radio, but they can never replace it. Simple radios still work point-to-point without the need for any sort of infrastructure.

I would say a more accurate statement would be that "ham radio has fewer people involved in the technical side of the hobby, but it is still alive, and you still need to learn at least basic electronics to pass the exam (even if most folk forget what they learned very quickly)."

Spelling nitpick: 'hobbyists.' Anyway, no argument otherwise. Both are excellent reference books.

For my part, I got lucky and got started in the 60's. Been a tinkerer ever since. I don't think I've got a single piece of test gear in my lab that's younger than 10 years, and several of my O-scopes (Tektronix 7000 series, mostly) are nearing 30 (and still working quite well, I would add).

The way I see it, the face of electronics hobby-tweaking is in a transitional stage right now, thanks to the leaps in microprocessor and DSP technology. It will settle down again, but the way I see it now is that us older folk are often mightily confused, while the youngsters don't understand the value of The Basics, and what the past can teach them. A good balance has yet to come.

Keep the peace(es).

--
Dr. Anton T. Squeegee, Director, Dutch Surrealist Plumbing Institute
(Known to some as Bruce Lane, KC7GR)
http://www.bluefeathertech.com -- kyrrin a/t bluefeathertech d-o=t calm
"Salvadore Dali's computer has surreal ports..."

Michael Black wrote: (snip)

(snip)

Amen. Elec. hobby magazines - and books, to some extent - drew me in powerfully ... with block and tackle, one might say. I loved "Radio TV Experimenter" (my all-time favorite) and built many of the projects therein. Years passed; I went to war; returned and attended college; got a nine-to-five and made lots of money. In the mean time RTE had morphed into something else, something much less. I didn't know because I had moved on, so I hadn't been present at the wake, so to speak. When I did find out, it was as though an old friend had died.

Every once in a while I encounter a cheap publication printed on newsprint. The look, feel, and smell take me back to the 60's when I read RTE cover to cover, over and over, and breadboarded with one of those big ol' Weller guns.

Teaching the importance and relevance and fun! of component level futzing to a youngster today is made more difficult by the dearth of good hobby pubs. Yesterday's components were, e.g., condensors and resistors and tubes; today's components are "chips". We are both richer and poorer for this, and because of it the youngsters suffer, albeit unknowingly.

--
(another) Michael

But one of the odd things is that discrete components are still readily available.

When I was a kid, there weren't many electronic devices around the home, so if you were lucky you'd find a TV set or radio in the garbage. And since most of those were tube based, they were covered with that grunge that seemed to be attracted to the heat.

Now, there is so much available. A few weeks ago I was walking to the grocery store, and found a tv set that had the back off. The actual circuit board was loose too, so I just had to snip some wires to get it off. I salvaged some parts, but of course at this point I'm loaded with junked parts. It could have been a source of capacitors, and even resistors, given that it wasn't surface mount components.

VCRs are plentiful in the trash, and they are still full of discrete transistors, and small motors, and pushbuttons, and usually some LEDs. For some beginner things, it likely can supply enough parts.

Though ironically, the problem is that the beginner will be fearful of using odd components, feeling a need to use the exact parts in the magazine (if those magazines were still publishing). I remember being the same way, pulling a store out of the Yellow Pages to go down with my parts list copied out of the magazine. And that project didn't work, because my soldering was awful and because I didn't have a clue whether the parts the store offered as alternatives were suitable. Only when I started using scrap parts did I have success. But even in the old days, there wasn't enough emphasis on how to use recycled parts.

And of course, pulling small speaker (and amplifier IC) out of a scrap radio is cheaper than buying those parts at the store, assuming even that there is a store in your locale that sells in small quantities to hobbyists.

Michael

Hi Bill :-)

Was a youngster here in the mid-90's. Admittedly stuff today is so mega advanced that you need so many pre-requisites to do anything at all. The moment of serendipity here was when the modularity of digital electronics popped into my head. So many of these chips can be bolted together in all sorts of different ways, but it took a while for the penny to drop.

My excitement here was a 7-segment display clock which I built with a microcontroller at the heart of it. Six 7-segment digits and a SINGLE

18-pin chip driving the lot. Had fancy things like sweeping the changing digits in a circle, flashing digits for the ones being set, different digits brighter than another.

But as a youngster today, I would imagine that they've either got-it or they ain't. It's quite a learning curve to do anything more than flash a few LEDs. Ahhhh, flip flops, two trannies, two caps, erm, two resistors, two LEDs, hard wired together without a PCB, button cell 3V battery.

As for 15volts. Two high mA 9v batteries strapped together maybe??

Or jump right into microcontrollers. Google PIC or just check this link for a start:

Don