I’m getting a real positive fealing this year about this approach to sharing my experiences and knowledge of technology by creating projects that use simple elements. There are so many dynamics that can be studied in the proccess of creating a simple machine. Today a young girl discovered that in the proccess of building a circuit, if you put a wire across a battery it gets hot. I told her “that’s called a short circuit”. I wish I had the time to tell her about the chemicals in the battery, the effect of dissimilar metals, and some thermal dynamics. But none the less, today in her life, she learned one more thing. I’ll keep working at this. I think it’s worth while. An exercise in consciuosness. We are stronger in the confidence of knowing.

So here is a video of a set of five simple projects that can be made with a basic toy motor a battery some wire and a small block of wood. Warning! making one of these projects can lead to hours of either frustration or intertainment depending on your point of view. In either case you’ll end up with a nice conversation piece.

I got the motors from (AllElectronics).

but you can also practice recycling and hack them out of old toys.

Have fun…

I’ve been so busy this year, I haven’t had time to update this blog. The two big projects I’ve been working on were “interACTIVE” an exhibition at the Wichita Art Museum and A Technology Art Sculpture with the 5th grade class of Beech Elementary School. You can see a video documentary of the Beech School project here (click on the picture).

You might notice the absence of kids in the video. When ever I was with the kids I didn’t have time to take pictures.

Prior to that was the Wichita Art Museum. Lee Shiney Chris Gulick and I started in September and worked out tails off to get it up and running by February. You can see pictures and blogs of this project (here). 

More to come…