What About Socialization?

The next installment of our Warning: Science in Progress! video blog is finally ready. This one was a blast to put together, not least because we are sporting our brand-new lab coats from American Science and Surplus.

In this episode, we demonstrate the use of a capacitor using a simple circuit involving a battery, a push-button switch, a resistor, and an LED. We are also joined by a special guest star.

The file size is very large, but it is hopefully worth the download time…

As I talked about earlier, Lydia and I are working on learning electronics together using the Arduino programmable microcontroller. Here’s the first episode of our video blog, in which Lydia demonstrates the “hello world” of electronic circuits: The Blinking LED.

Lydia and I have started working on electronics together. I’ve finally got a decent kit of materials together: a collection of basic components as well as an Arduino programmable microcontroller. My goal is to help her understand the way electronic things work, to help her become a maker and not just another consumer of technology.

So far, for source materials, we’re using two primary sources:

• Electronic Circuits for the Evil Genius, and
• a great set of notes from Tod E. Kurt, from his ‘Spooky Projects - Introduction to Microcontrollers with Arduino‘ classes.

The thing that I like about our approach is that Lydia is getting the fundamentals of both programming and electronics. And we’re having a ton of fun.

We’ll be taking pictures of our projects and maybe even making some videos. Stay tuned!