"H. P. Friedrichs" ) writes:

This is something of a detour, but have you ever heard recordings of
sounds the Ionosphere makes? Remarkable chirps, whistles, clicks, and
pops. Slow down the recordings and you get sounds that are startlingly
similar to the songs of certain birds, or the calls of whales. The
equipment to capture this is cheap and easy to build. This is one
situation where a remote location is a real asset, because there is far
less man-made electrical noise to foul your recordings. Get a kid
hooked on something like this, and who knows what kind of scientific or
technical career could develop from this experience.

I sort of said something along the same lines, though maybe it's not
apparent.

The idea of something more open-ended seems more important than a funneling
into something specific. I don't think anyone could see anything wrong
with getting the kids interested and even excited about science
and technology. But how you get them there can be a mystery. Somethingt
sparks an interest in one child, and not in another. The goal can't be
about the kids getting a ham license, it has to be the benefits
they might get from being involved in the hobby. And there are all
kinds of things that might provide similar benefits, and might suit
the kids more than spending time preparing them for a ham license. The
effort might be better spent on getting them interested in something
that fits them, and letting that be a vector for learning.

Too often, adults forget what it's like to be young, and they use
adult notions in trying to interpret the young. So often there is
the "kids today aren't interested in science" yet if they aren't
given the chance they never will be. And of course, science was
never something belonging to all. Building that regen receiver
and getting it working should be as much of a challenge and thrill
as it was back when I was young, because it's not about having the
receiver (which won't compare with something store bought) but that
you built it yourself.

I threw together a stepping motor, diode, "super-cap" and LED to make a
crank flashlight a couple of months ago. I'm still trying to remember where
I put the other supercaps I took out of VCRs, because there wasn't enough
capacity. But I was making it to show the daughter of a friend, who is about
the right age to appreciate that such things are in the realm of making
yourself. It doesn't matter that you can buy such things pretty cheaply
now, it matters that it conveys that such things don't just grow on trees.

If we aren't doing this sort of thing, conveying that we are intrigued
by such things and showing off how it's not a black box beyond our control
but something we can put together from scrap parts, then there's no chance
that the young will become interested in science and technology.

Michael VE2BVW