>
> One of the high-school kids in the FIRST robotics club that I mentor is
> very
> interested in learning electronics and I agreed to teach him what I can.
> He's in the high-school's engineering academy, which is mainly electrical
> engineering, but he's a sophomore so still pretty green.  But of all the
> robotics club members, he's got the best qualities for this -- very sharp,
> very interested, and has that get-it-done attitude.  And my participation
> is
> all voluntary, so I'm not following any formal course/syllabus.
>
> I'm thinking he should pick up one of those 50-in-1 (or whatever number)
> electronics kits, and I'll teach him a lot of the background (ohms law,
> digital gates/logic, transistor basics, etc) from a practical perspective.
> He can learn the deep theory in school later.  I can teach him how to
> solder, and have him help me with simple projects.  The eventual goal is
> to
> get him into PIC programming, get him familiar with PCB-layout tools,
> making
> PC-Boards, etc.
>
> Anyone here done this before, and have any recommendations?
>
> Cheers,
> -Neil.


I think it's great that you're doing this! I helped a guy with his
electronics projects from junior high through high school. He's now
graduated high school and is working as a technician at my former
employer. With him, it was largely self-directed. He had various projects
he wanted to do, so I'd help him with them, trying to sneak the "how it
works" theory in there along the way. I need to go back there some weekend
and do a PCB revision since an LCD being used in a product is being
discontinued. I hope to direct him in doing the revisions so he gets
familiar with the schematic capture and PCB layout tools. He also took
several of the community college classes I teach, so he got some more
concentrated theory. Notes on my introductory class are at
http://sujan.hallikainen.org/cuesta/et113/ . I most recently taught an
analog circuits class. The web site is not as complete on that, but one of
my students took extensive notes and let me post them. That stuff is at
http://sujan.hallikainen.org/cuesta/et115/ .

Note that the program I teach in uses electron current flow. So I have to
turn my head around when I go out there, since I use conventional current
flow during the day.

Probably the things I concentrate on the most are "differential Ohm's Law"
(for conventional current, it's I=(Vtail-Vtip)/R), showing voltage
polarities across resistors (for conventional current, the end the current
is going in to is positive), then "wandering around" the circuit
increasing and decreasing voltage to ground as we go up and down through
various components. On op amps, I use the "theory of the happy op amp"
that assumes the two input voltages are the same. Determine the voltage at
the non-inverting input, assume the inverting input is the same, and
analyze from there.

Good luck!

Harold



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