Printable catalog (PDF)
We are working on a Creative Common’d coloring book for “kids” (similar to Citizen Engineer volume 01) – the title for now is “Ladyada’s e is for electronics” – here is a list of words, one for each letter – if you can think of a better one or additional one for any letter let us know. Any suggestions you have would be helpful.
You can post your suggestions in the comments or stop by our weekly “Ask an engineer chat” Saturday night, 10pm ET 10/10/2009 (additional details below).
a – amperes
b – battery / breadboard
c – capacitor
d – diode
e – electronics
f – fpga/frequency/fet
g – ground
h – hertz
i – current/infrared/inductor
j – joule
k – kelvin
l – led
m – motor/microcontroller/multimeter/mos/mosfet the cat
n – noise/npn
o – ohm/oscilloscope/opamp
p – potentiometer/pcb
q – quartz / quantum field effect transistor
r – resistor/relay
s – switch/silcon/soldering iron
t – transistor
u – ultraviolet/usb/uart
v – voltage
w – wire/watt
x – xtal
y – yagi antenna
z – zener
Chat details!
- Visit our new “chat” section on Adafruit at 10pm ET – 9/26/2009
- Or visit our Ustream page
- For old schoolers, you can use IRC, you’ll need a Ustream log/pass, check out the Ustream IRC how-tos here and here
- We are #adafruit-industries6796 on IRC server chat1.ustream.tv
- There will be a trivia question at the end of the night as always!
- Lastly, if anyone can save a log we’d appreciate it
FEED
F for Farad, or Faraday cage?
Comment by Katzmandu — October 10, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
e is for “e”, as in natural logarithmic base.
l is for “Lady Ada” — not Limor, but Ada Lovelace. You could write a brief bio.
q is for “quiescent point”? might be hard to explain this to kids, tho.
x is for xformer, cross product, or “unknown”?
what’s the age range? i mean, is this going to be a picture book or a non-fiction kids book?
Comment by johngineer — October 10, 2009 @ 2:51 pm
b – bipolar (junction transistor)
c – coulomb
d – digital
h – henry
k – kilo (ohms, watts, etc)
n – nanoseconds, nanofarads
p – picofarad, PNP
s – semiconductor
Z – impedance
Comment by senojcet — October 10, 2009 @ 3:57 pm
and also the “regulator”
Comment by thorkell mani — October 10, 2009 @ 4:23 pm
I would suggest electron for e. Makes more sense than anything else. Fun to color too
.
Comment by Oleg — October 10, 2009 @ 5:38 pm
the big prize right now is for x. x is hard! y was tough but yagi definitely wins that one
Comment by ladyada — October 10, 2009 @ 5:53 pm
x-axis?
Comment by Oleg — October 10, 2009 @ 6:06 pm
X-Y operation or X-Y display (in oscilloscopes); also, X10 probe
Comment by Oleg — October 10, 2009 @ 6:10 pm
I’d stay away from the bigger, higher concepts, like breadboard, FPGA, etc. You’ll lose them. Where something is a person’s name, like Farad(ay), Volt(a), George Simon Ohm, a portait and a short bio. Sneak a little history into the lesson.
I can probably have an actual 7 yr old girl proofread this.
Comment by ka1kjz — October 10, 2009 @ 8:00 pm
A for Arduino?
Comment by Chris Foote — October 10, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
A, D = analog, digital
F = Farnsworth (Philo T.)
Q = quadrature
X = xor
Comment by Phil — October 11, 2009 @ 12:15 am
XTAL was the first thing to come to my mind but maybe …
X = Xistor (abbreviation for transistor)
X = Xerography
Comment by KTownsend — October 11, 2009 @ 10:21 am
a – amp
b – button, bias
c – charge, conductivity
d – DC, DIP
e – etch, Euler, encoder
f – FM, field, filter
g – gate, gauss, gyroscope, G (conductivity), graphite, gps, geo-location, geek
h – hum, humidity
i – sqrt(-1)
j – joystick, jumper
k – knock
l – length, light, LCD, lead (Pb)
m – mass, measurement, money (like a battery made from copper and zinc), metric, mesh
n – nerd,
o – optical, orthogonal, o-ring,
p – photo, pH, pressure, polynomial, push-pull, pad
q -
r – ram, rom, remote, rohs
s – sensor, sound, scanner, stress, strain gauge, speed
t – tubes, time, thru-hole
u –
v – vu-meter,
x -
y -
z -
Comment by Felixe — October 11, 2009 @ 6:01 pm
Q is for well… “Q.” Quality. Figure of merit.
A good way to point out the idea that we are working with imperfect materials as we play with beautiful concepts.
Comment by John West — October 11, 2009 @ 6:42 pm
Xenon. The noble gas, not the XBox processor.
As in Xenon flash lamps.
?
Comment by nvp — October 11, 2009 @ 10:11 pm
f – flip flop
l = logic
m = memory
o = oscillator
p = power, power supply
My 3 year old son likes looking through my now ancient copy of “Usborne introduction to electronics” which I suspect is probably out of print.
It is well written for young children and you could do a lot worse for a reference on what to include.
Comment by James — October 12, 2009 @ 5:16 am
I agree with ka1kjz, I’d keep it to real “colorable” things that are easy to understand, like components and people. Trying to color a “Hertz” may make it unapproachable. How about “e” for electron, one unit of charge?
Maybe also have a page where kids color a number of things according to the resistor value colors? I wouldn’t make a big deal about resistors (maybe a little deal), just something to plant the seed. For example:
1 brown bunny (color brown)
2 red strawberries (color red)
3 orange oranges
4 yellow daffodils
Comment by FazJaxton — October 12, 2009 @ 10:43 am
My daughter recently turned 6 and we are working on some of these concepts. We’re probably below the target age for this, but I would use “C” for a more basic concept: Circuit. Open and closed circuits are a good starting point. When there are dual paths but one has an open switch, what happens? Then conductivity / resistance.
My daughter loves (de)coding things, she’d love the resistor color code to numbers things as mentioned above. (She loves putting away my resistors.)
For my daughter’s age, I propose:
a – amperes
b – battery
c – circuit
f – fast (almost speed of light or how many cycles a second ICs can handle.)
g – ground
i – current
l – led
m – multimeter
n – not working? (Troubleshooting tips: is there a circuit? No short circuit? switches?)
o – ohm
p – positive (versus negative voltage)
s – switch (Short circuit?)
I’ll ask her tonight…
jf
Comment by Jamie Fraser — October 12, 2009 @ 12:58 pm
X is also a “don’t care” term in digital logic
Comment by Nick — October 12, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
X could be for XNOR or XOR logic gates although im sure this has already been mentioned
i would make the S entry for SPI since it’s pretty ubiquitous and important in EE
this all depends on the age range, though…
Comment by luno — October 12, 2009 @ 9:05 pm
Serious,
Keep it very low level and simmple,
Down to the basics of positive and negative
Gate switching on and off
Ramping that up to basic basic circuits
I’m teaching a very very young padawan of 7
About batteries, leds, and motors now,
This would be a fantastic resource.
a – arduino / atom
b – battery
c – current
d – dataman (grins) / diode
e – electron
f – fuse
g – giga
h – hertz
i – inductor
j – joule
k – kelvin
l – led
m – microcontroller
n – negative
o – ohm
p – positive
q – quark
r – resistor
s – switch
t – transistor
u – usb
v – voltage
w – watt
x – xtal
y – yagi antenna
z – zener
Comment by dataman — October 13, 2009 @ 1:25 pm
This is a great idea. When will it be available? Have you thought about selling advance copies to raise publishing money like these guys?
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simplescott/designing-obama
Comment by Chris — October 26, 2009 @ 1:18 am