Author Topic: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?  (Read 2216 times)

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Offline MesstechnikerTopic starter

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What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« on: August 12, 2020, 05:13:01 pm »
The 4 1/2 year old son of my nephew only recently accidentally discovered my lab. He stood in the door for over a minute any was apparently overwhelmed by the sight and has been talking about it at home ever since. Now my question: what to do with him next time round?

My first idea would be to let him flash some LEDs by connecting two wires.
Have him strip some wires, provided he his strong enough? Seeing all that bent metal on their playgrounds, he should be in a position to do so.

But what next?

Bare in mind that I am probably the worst teacher on the plant. Incapable of teaching a 9 year old the small multiplication tables.... :palm: An experience I'll never forget. Maximum fail.
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Offline Andreas

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2020, 06:41:39 pm »

But what next?


Perhaps showing some Lissayous figures on your scope?

with best regards

Andreas
 

Offline tunk

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2020, 06:51:45 pm »
If you have an osilloscope and (somehow) can connect a microphone to it,
then you can ask him to talk and show how it "looks". You could also
connect the microphone to an amplifier and speaker, and have him touch
the speaker membrane.
 

Offline mjs

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2020, 07:01:37 pm »
Favourites of my 4y in my lab:
Cutting stuff with side cutters (He already knows to spare my Sucoflex cables and I know to keep my expensive stuff away)
Testing 9v battery voltage with his tongue - and making his older siblings do the same
Just wondering the tools
Multimeter - continuity beeper and voltage measurement of those batteries

LEDs and actually contacting something together I'm still waiting a bit.

One of the probable causes I'm in the trade are the many visits to the the home labs of the neighbour and schoolmate engineer fathers. So be careful there ;-)
 
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Online NiHaoMike

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #4 on: August 12, 2020, 11:05:03 pm »
I think Dave can give a lot of advice, considering he had been in that situation twice.

I would say give him some sort of really simple logic simulator. Show him what the different gates do and see if he's able to come up with some interesting designs by cascading a few.
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Offline maginnovision

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #5 on: August 13, 2020, 06:14:42 am »
I've written programs to do math with really large numbers. Setup an Atmel CPLD dev board and do different things with that. Oscilloscope experiments and "games". Playing with different components. Building and programming a "Simon" type game. Building something to play music. Playing with autonomous cars in manual or autonomous mode. Examining things under the microscope. Or ask the 4.5 year old what they might like to see, or what they're interested in. At that age it's mostly on you to be interested in what you decide to do.
« Last Edit: August 13, 2020, 06:47:18 am by maginnovision »
 

Online KE5FX

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #6 on: August 13, 2020, 06:35:06 am »
Me: "What's up with the funny-looking bulb in this night light?"

Dad: "That's a neon bulb."

Me: "Oh.  What's the resistor for?"

Dad: "Take it out and see."

Encouraging me to try that without safety glasses wasn't cool, but all's well that ends well, I guess.  :-DD
 

Offline daqq

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #7 on: August 13, 2020, 07:53:40 am »
Practical stuff. Try to teach him to solder. Let him solder a few LEDs together and hook it up to a battery.

edit: Even soldered wire sculptures with no electric function are something he will appreciate.
« Last Edit: August 13, 2020, 07:57:19 am by daqq »
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Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #8 on: August 13, 2020, 08:03:22 am »
 

Offline Kasper

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #9 on: August 14, 2020, 12:31:44 am »
I think a function generator, a speaker and an oscilloscope are a fun combo.
 
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Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #10 on: August 14, 2020, 08:13:09 am »
Bare in mind that I am probably the worst teacher on the plant. Incapable of teaching a 9 year old the small multiplication tables.... :palm: An experience I'll never forget. Maximum fail.
Some people are innate teachers, others are not; there is nothing fail about it.

Thing is, there is no need to treat this as a teaching opportunity at all.  Let him observe and experiment; be a safety supervisor, not a teacher!

I wasn't much older when I started my woodworking hobby: one of my first ones was a hedgehog, having hammered a couple of hundred 4" nails about 1" deep into a small log. :P  (Fortunately, they were "reclaimed" nails from concrete moulding timbers, unreusable parts burned and me collected the nails from the ashes.)

Sometimes kids like to watch, sometimes to do; ask and listen.  Talk to them like they were your colleagues (but omit jargon, and explain words and terms when they don't follow), and you have a friend for life.  Probably make another engineer or scientist, though.  ;D
 

Offline duckduck

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #11 on: August 14, 2020, 03:38:08 pm »
But what next?

Things that make light and sound that are interactive -- a pot that controls frequency, a switch that turns on and off or selects lo/hi or color. Have it pre-built and then adjust and modify when kids drop by.
 

Online coppice

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #12 on: August 14, 2020, 03:41:07 pm »
A 4.5 year old's little hands should be great for fine soldering......... In fact any high volume production work involving small parts.
 
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Offline MesstechnikerTopic starter

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #13 on: August 14, 2020, 05:48:29 pm »
Thanks for the hints.  :-+
Next time he will come round, I'll simply
wait as to what his interests might be and
then go on from there.

Will report in due time. Might be a while though.
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Offline duckduck

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #14 on: August 17, 2020, 10:18:33 pm »
I think a function generator, a speaker and an oscilloscope are a fun combo.

Jr. enjoyed hearing the signal generator and the permutations of frequency, volume, and sine/square. I didn't think to hook it up to the o-scope. I'll have to give that a shot next time.
 

Offline Kasper

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #15 on: August 18, 2020, 05:08:03 pm »
I think a function generator, a speaker and an oscilloscope are a fun combo.

Jr. enjoyed hearing the signal generator and the permutations of frequency, volume, and sine/square. I didn't think to hook it up to the o-scope. I'll have to give that a shot next time.

Good to hear.  I think that was the first lab in college.
 

Offline Refrigerator

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #16 on: August 18, 2020, 09:25:35 pm »
Practical stuff. Try to teach him to solder. Let him solder a few LEDs together and hook it up to a battery.

edit: Even soldered wire sculptures with no electric function are something he will appreciate.

Easy to get burned though. I know because i used to solder my broken plastic toys together when i was 5.
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Offline kleiner Rainer

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #17 on: August 19, 2020, 11:09:32 am »
What I did with my godchildren: get a bat detector kit, build it together and search for bats in the evening. This year I will take eight children out for our local nature conservancy group during "bat night" and show them our local bat population. Great fun, I can assure you.

We use these:

https://www.amazon.de/FRANZIS-Fledermausdetektor-zum-Selberbauen-Engl/dp/3645652760


Greetings,

Rainer
 
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #18 on: August 19, 2020, 11:35:06 am »
The 4 1/2 year old son of my nephew only recently accidentally discovered my lab. He stood in the door for over a minute any was apparently overwhelmed by the sight and has been talking about it at home ever since. Now my question: what to do with him next time round?

Ah, you lucky person :)

Whatever you choose, consider
  • fit it to his attention span. If he's interested he will continue, if he's not that's fine too
  • immediate feedback helps. Having a payoff in 60 mins may be too far away
  • have things to twiddle, and the abilty to see/hear/feel (not smell!) the difference
  • open ended is good, since you can't predict how long they will remain interested
  • be prepared for them to be more interested in the box than the present. That's good, since it shows imagination and active thought, not mere passive reception

I rather like the microphone + amplifier + scope idea, since it fits all those.

But above all listen and watch - see what catches their interest!
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Offline MesstechnikerTopic starter

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #19 on: August 19, 2020, 12:33:32 pm »
Thanks for the advice here. Apparently his attention span is quite short as experienced myself yesterday while out shopping together with his grandmother and aunt. She said this is probably due to the mistake of his mother letting him use a smartphone alone keeping him quiet beginning at the age of 2 or so.  :palm:. Played the game of "how many groceries do you know?" After two (cucumber and red pepper) he was distracted by nothing apparent. Grandmother said he knows all the Lidl groceries.  :-+ So it will be difficult to keep him interested in anything for longer that say 20 seconds.  :palm:
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #20 on: August 19, 2020, 02:29:26 pm »
Thanks for the advice here. Apparently his attention span is quite short as experienced myself yesterday while out shopping together with his grandmother and aunt. She said this is probably due to the mistake of his mother letting him use a smartphone alone keeping him quiet beginning at the age of 2 or so.  :palm:. Played the game of "how many groceries do you know?" After two (cucumber and red pepper) he was distracted by nothing apparent. Grandmother said he knows all the Lidl groceries.  :-+ So it will be difficult to keep him interested in anything for longer that say 20 seconds.  :palm:

There are advantages to letting a kid become bored - they learn to examine things in detail to find something interesting (or they become destructive to get attention).

You can't win all battles, you can only bias them in your favour.

Perhaps trying the "what do you think will happen if you do X" and "how does doing X' and X'' change things" and "bet you can't get it so big that Y". If that involves doing something normally "forbidden", then so much the better - e.g. louder and louder.
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Offline GlennSprigg

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Re: What to show/let do with a 4 1/2 year old in the lab?
« Reply #21 on: August 20, 2020, 01:28:59 pm »
ASK him what he would like to do and know about!  (Things that he saw...).  ;D
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