T said:
Actually you can blink LED's all you want with a platform that costs as
little as $20 or haven't you heard of the Arduino?
Or a 2n2222, 2 resistors and a cap, but the thread is not
about the many ways to blink an LED.
Many (most?) of the kids today have been jaded by the advances
made in technology since the "breadboard days". Binking an LED
carries no charm for them against the background of the
alphabet soup of commonplace electronic stuff like IPODs, MP3's
TIVO, DVD, PCs, Cell phones etc etc. Most of today's population
can't conceive of what it was like without radio or television
or even microwave ovens. The "magic" of how a voice or an
image of someone 100 or 10,000 miles away gets to your house
has lost its luster. It used to be that the kid who knew how
to wire up an extension phone or an intercom was looked at as
some kind of genius by his neighbors. That skill was valuable,
and (relatively) rare. Today, people just go to Walmart or
Best Buy or wherever and buy a cordless phone or a wireless intercom.
The typical kid gets no satisfaction learning how to build and install
an intercom or a doorbell or wire up an extension phone todayt, and
the competion (store bought stuff) is far superior to what he does,
and readily available.
The innate interest that used to drive kids into breadboarding
circuits probably drives some of them into programming, these
days. And if they're interested in electronics the same way
"breadboarders" were, they can fire up Spice and "breadboard"
that way. No need to save pennies for the next order from
Allied in Chicago or Lafayette Radio, and no need to go
dumpster diving for old radios and tv sets.
Ed