“Ladyada’s e is for electronics” – color book… coming soon!

Crayons
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

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22 Comments

  1. F for Farad, or Faraday cage?

  2. 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?

  3. 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

  4. and also the “regulator”

  5. I would suggest electron for e. Makes more sense than anything else. Fun to color too :-).

  6. the big prize right now is for x. x is hard! y was tough but yagi definitely wins that one

  7. x-axis?

  8. X-Y operation or X-Y display (in oscilloscopes); also, X10 probe

  9. 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.

  10. A for Arduino?

  11. A, D = analog, digital
    F = Farnsworth (Philo T.)
    Q = quadrature
    X = xor

  12. XTAL was the first thing to come to my mind but maybe …

    X = Xistor (abbreviation for transistor)
    X = Xerography

  13. 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 –

  14. 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.

  15. Xenon. The noble gas, not the XBox processor.
    As in Xenon flash lamps.
    ?

  16. 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.

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. X is also a “don’t care” term in digital logic

  20. 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…

  21. 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

  22. 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

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