Somewhere inside the Smithsonian Nationl Museum of Natural History, in Washington, D.C., a piece of gypsum appears to have sprouted a snake. Like many of the museum’s specimens, this mineral is bewitching and bizarre enough that some visitors can’t believe it was plucked from a cave in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. “One of the biggest misconceptions we get is that people see these beautiful specimens and think someone created it,” says Gabriela Farfan, the museum’s curator of gems and minerals.
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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, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, 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.
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