Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:15:41 -0800 (PST), JIMMIE
wrote:

On Dec 14, 1:14 pm, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
The most effective song and dance I did in front of a Jr High Skool
class was tearing apart various cell phones, walkie talkies,
computahs, and consumer electronics to demonstrate that they should
not be afraid of such things. Unfortunately, the parents hated my
guts when the kids starting practicing what I showed them. Learn by
Destroying(tm).

LOL I showed showed some kids how to disassembe and reassemble a
desktop computer. I understand a few did well on the disassembly part
but not so well on putting it back together their parents computers.
Jimmie

That's the way we all learn. Next time, they'll do better. You've
hit on one of my many pet peeves. The skools are so afraid of
liability issues that any activity that involves potentially dangerous
tools or devices are proscribed by the administration. The result is
a generation (or two) that don't know which end of the soldering iron
to grab, don't know how to use hand tools, and have zero experience
with machinery beyond simple power tools.

They really have to learn to use such tools early in life or they'll
never learn. A friend of mine's father was an auto mechanic. He
didn't want his son to also become an auto mechanic. Every time his
son would pickup a tool, his father would take it away from him. It
worked. We met when he was about 40 years old. Despite practice and
some instruction, he was a total klutz with hand tool, and a hazard to
life and property with power tools. Try as he might, he couldn't
recover from the lack of childhood experience with tools. However, he
was far from useless. He taught me Unix and some programming in trade
for me maintaining his (Plexus and NCR) servers.

One of my standard birthday (and sometime Hanukah) gifts is a tool box
stuffed full of quality hand tools. I build the kit myself which
includes everything from jewelers screwdrivers to a claw hammer. When
I have time, I hot stamp the birthday brat's name into the plastic
handles, mostly to discourage anyone from borrowing tools. Years
later, the kit is invariably dispersed and half missing, but during
those years, the birthday brat gets some very useful experience with
hand tools.

I was encouraged to take things apart when I was fairly young. I had
my own tool collection by age 7 or so and was encouraged to use it. I
managed to break many things. My father and I would sit down, and he
would fix it. One day, I decided to take apart a brass mantle wind-up
clock. The main spring went boing. Instead of my father fixing it
while I watched, I got to fix it, while he watched. I fumbled,
blundered, and generally made a mess while my father offered advice,
but no direct help. At about an hour a day, we got it back together
and mostly working after about 12 days. I noticed that my father was
sitting on his hands. When I asked about it much later, he said it
wasn't to stop him from grabbing the clock and fixing it himself. It
was to keep him from grabbing my throat and strangling me because I
was doing such a lousy job. Years later, I was rebuilding his factory
sewing machines and later worked on rebuilding teletype machines.
Without that early experience, I wouldn't have had a chance.

Learn by Destroying(tm) which means if you haven't broken it, ripped
it apart, and fixed it, you don't understand how it works.


Reading this post made me smile, as it brought back so many memories.
When I was a young'un, I had a curiosity that went way past what most
people would call common sense. I disassembled household appliances to
see what made them work. Unfortunately it wasn't until I was 16 or so
that I could put them back together. I tried chemically boring a
lawnmower engine - btw, while hydrochloric acid will attack an Aluminum
cylinder wall very well, it isn't too controllable. 8^) I took so many
things apart that it was starting to become a bit of a hardship, and my
folks were at a loss, because grounding me just gave more time at home
to find things to take apart.

My Grandfather found the answer. He worked at Bendix where they made car
and other radios. There were rejects and prototype radios that the
company would give away. Anyhow, he and I sat down and built a power
supply, and then he let me have at the radios. Ground rules were that I
had to limit my taking apart to the radios, or things my folks were
throwing out.

That was the start of both my electronics interest, and furthered my
total lack of fear to tear things apart. All I know is that it was about
as much fun as I ever had.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -