Parts and Crafts

So it’s day 2 of week 1 of Parts and Crafts, home of the Pop-O popcorn electric popcorn popper.

Yep, that’s the theme for the week, it turns out. Ian and Connor, two of this week’s kids, came in with the plan of making an electric popcorn popper and some ideas for how to do it. Within minutes of everyone arriving at the church, all of the kids were on board and thinking and talking about the project. We’ve had a bunch of snags and hiccoughs along the way, trying to figure out a good source of heat, a good type of casing, etc.

All of this raises my “safety” flags, of course – long coils of exposed wire deliberately short-circuited inside of an aluminum box – I’m fumbling my way through the relevant calculations at the moment to decide what lines I need to draw and when I need to draw them –but, still, I don’t have to worry too hard – the kids are suprisingly conservative – they suggested and immediately threw out the idea of wiring directly to 120 VAC as too dangerous. Which is great, in a way, though I’d prefer to throw out the idea on the grounds that it’s just not a particularly good one. The problem with wiring 120VAC from scratch is not that it’s “too dangerous”, it’s that it’s hard enough to do safely that it’s just not worth the effort when there are other possible solutions to the problem. Care, patience, and effort make safety, but sometimes using a certain tool, or a certain method safely requires more care, patience, and effort, than we can reasonably give to it at camp.

Their enthusiasm is contagious. I’ve spent the last hour and a half or so thinking about all of the different things that I would try if I was going to make a popcorn popper so that I can have useful ideas if anyone wants my input. I actually find myself having to restrain myself – it’s not my project, it’s their project, and if I get too excited about it I forget and start to take ownership. I actually spent half an hour after everyone but me had left the church, sitting on the floor near the popper with a multimeter, poking around, thinking about temperature. I keep telling myself that it’s way better for kids to work through their own ideas, good or bad, than to use mine, and I think it’s starting to sink in. Still, I think it’s appropriate for me to offer some calculations along with the ideas behind them and let the popcorn popper makers do what they want with them.

Well, there’s one area where I have to provide my input – as I mentioned above, the project triggers a lot of my major concerns and uncertainties around working with kids. Safety, of course, is a huge huge issue when working on anything with anyone, but doubly-so when working with kids and when working with non-experts. I don’t want to restrict anyone’s tinkering anymore than is vital for their safety but, until a few minutes ago, I didn’t have a good handle on where the lines were between “safe” and “not safe” for this particular project. When working with kids you’re always going to err on the side of being too restrictive in the name of safety. If you’re not an expert, if you don’t know off the top of your head whether a method is a good idea, you have to say “no, you can’t do it that way.” This is pretty easy – it’s easy to restrict people to the point where they can’t hurt themselves, but being able to quickly and correctly do the hard thinking that lets you make more informed judgments and risk assesments takes quite a bit of knowledge and intuition. Or the willingness to say “hey, let’s not do this right now. let me think about this tonight, do some calculations, talk to some people, and see if I think it’s feasible, and then we’ll make something work tomorrow.”

I don’t have all of the immediate knowledge that I need for much of anything – the willingness to wait, ask questions, and do research is pretty much all I’ve got in the way of technical skills, but it’s a shockingly useful one. “If it’s hard, go slow” is one of our educational mantras – having trouble wrapping leds around a wire for a lightsaber? coiling wire for an electromagnet? work more slowly, you can get it done, I promise! I’m continually surprised and pleased by how frequently I say something to a camper or student and then realize that it’s actually really good advice that I should follow, too.

Let’s see, let’s see. In addition to popcorn poppers? Made some lightsabers, of course. Played with dry ice – launched some rockets and made some flowing bubble fountains that look uncannily like a particle simulation program that I wrote recently for my architecture job. Tomorrow we solder flashlights together, maybe make electromagnets, speakers – all leading up to putting together drawdios, which I am wicked excited about.

That’s all for now!