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08.11

Making Stuff

By Donald Christiansen

Today’s young engineers are probably tired of hearing how mid-20^th-century engineers grew up making things from discarded parts they found in the dump or at the neighbor’s curb. The veteran engineers say that those creative hobbies helped lead them to successful engineering careers. I have written about this phenomenon a few times over the years, sometimes noting how my dad and I would spend Saturday mornings picking through the bins of “Radio Row” in downtown Manhattan to gather parts for our respective projects—including home-built radio receivers, amplifiers, and telegraph equipment. Today’s kids, I said, don’t get to experiment with crystal sets, Tesla coils, resistors, “condensers,” vacuum tubes, or transistors. They don’t get to build stuff from kits. They don’t even get to create anything from Lincoln Logs or Erector sets, I said. (I have since been proven wrong on the latter, an admission I hope to elaborate on in a future column.)

Good News

So I was pleasantly surprised to learn that what is appropriately termed the “maker movement” is gaining momentum. It is exemplified by programs like Design Squad, in which 5^th- to 8^th-graders are challenged to design and build something from scratch, and the FIRST Robotics Competition; in which high-school students are given six weeks to build a robot from a common kit of parts.

An apparently more free-wheeling design and make-it program is the Maker Faire, the first of which was held in San Mateo, Calif., in 2006. It attracted some 65,000 attendees. The brainstorm of Dale Dougherty, the founder of Make magazine, a quarterly devoted to projects built by do-it-yourselfers, the Maker Faire features exhibits, workshops, and competitions. The fairs have been held annually since 2008. In 2011, at least eight of them are scheduled for cities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Both teams and individuals are invited to participate. Among the areas suggested by its organizers for exploration are electronics, electronic vehicles, radios, robotics, vintage computers, biotech and chemistry projects, game systems, and unusual tools or machines.

In June 2011, the PBS Newshour reviewed some of the current contest entries, including a see-saw that pumps water, a surveillance drone, a giant electric talking giraffe, and a rolling cupcake. A team consisting of a father and his two sons (ages 12 and 17) were attempting to improve on a fire-breathing dragon they built a year ago, adding a “superhero suit brimming with lights, wired for sound, and complete with an arm cannon.”

Dougherty, when asked by the PBS interviewer whether kids today find themselves in a “Don’t try this at home” culture, responded with a resounding yes, adding that kids are disengaged. Their tendency, he said, is to watch something, read about it, play a video, or “just do it digitally.” He sees “making” as a gateway to engineering and science, noting that when he asks engineers and scientists what fascinated them as kids, a typical response is that they delighted in taking things apart.

The PBS commentator noted that the maker movement may be taking root in schools, helping fill the void that was left when shop classes vanished a generation ago. In one case, a high-school science teacher at Lighthouse Community Charter School in Oakland, Calif., created a class in which students design and build projects for the Maker Faire.

Tom Kalil of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy noted that the maker movement could play an important role in helping meet the Administration’s goal of getting more youngsters excited about science, technology, engineering and math.

Fun, But . . .

Nearly all students interviewed about their experiences with a Maker Faire project emphasized the fun aspect. But when one was asked whether it made her more interested in studying science her answer was no. “It’s a lot different. This is fun science, and that’s boring science . . .” she said. Her reaction might be good news to Maker Faire’s Dougherty, but a wake-up call to science and math instructors who teach “from the ground up,” emphasizing only the fundamentals of physics and math, with little or no connection to the real world. The maker movement introduces a “top down” element based on physically realizable projects. When the two are merged, the likelihood of fostering a stronger base of future engineers and scientists is enhanced.

Resources

• Design Squad: http://www.intel.com/education/designsquad/

• FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology): usfirst.org

• Bascomb, N., The New Cool, Crown Publishers, 2011 (The account of how one high-school team put together a prize-winning entry in the FIRST Robotics Competition).

• Maker Faire website. http://makerfaire.com

• “Can DIY Movement Fix a Crisis in U.S. Science Education?,” PBS Newshour, air date June 29, 2011.

• Make magazine: makezine.com

• Turner, J., DIY Essentials, IEEE Spectrum, Aug. 2011.

Scheduled Maker Faires

• Brighton, U.K., Brighton Dome Foyer and Bar, Sept. 3, 2011.

• New York Hall of Science, Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, Queens, N.Y., Sept. 17, 2011. (Entry form at http://makerfaire.com/newyork/2011/entry/ )

Christiansen is the former editor and publisher of IEEE Spectrum and an independent publishing consultant. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. You can write to him at donchristiansen@ieee.org.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.