The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a graphic novel that uses trolls, aliens, and a county fair to explain how it investigates mysterious disease outbreaks. It’s meant for teens, but it’s a good read for adults, too
Nearly two dozen very serious subject matter experts from the CDC, the US Department of Agriculture, and the 4-H club contributed to Junior Disease Detectives: Operation Outbreak, which you can download on the CDC’s website. It’s a detective story with cover art that looks like something off a science fiction book from the 1980s. And even though I’m not their target audience, I tried it — and it’s actually a lot of earnest, educational fun.
The book opens with a group of students at a 4-H club meeting, prepping for the CDC’s Disease Detective Camp. They imagine fantastical outbreaks they’d fight: in one of these imagined scenarios, medieval archers defend a castle against an troll-like army of germs. In another, vaccines keep an astronaut safe on a space station contaminated with an alien virus.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
