The other day I saw something that a few of you might want to consider for a kid or even yourself - the Turing Tumble Mechanical Computer.
It turns out digital computers are mostly switches. A lot of switches these days - perhaps a trillion in your smartphone. As a teenager I built a very simple relay based digital computer based on a column in an old Scientific American. Later I built an updated version that substituted transistors for the relays using some (free) components from the high school physics teacher.
Playing with these beasts is an excellent introduction to understanding how logic circuits work. You'd be surprised how many computer programmers are hazy on the subject (of course they work at a level of abstraction far above the silicon - or what old timers called the iron). The early machines of the 30s were very important and set the stage for the dramatic developments that followed. Here's an outstanding non-technical short history of those early days. (recommended!)
But back to the Turing Tumble.. It's limited, but that's central to its beauty. The instruction book has about sixty examples to play with and an aha! just might strike leading to out-of-the-book insights.
It's also great to play around with extremely simple silicon digital computers - particularly those that you can hook up to sensors, lights and other interfaces to the real world. But getting down to the basics is usually a paper or YouTube exercise or, if you want to do it yourself, a frustrating experience involving a lot of soldering and a non-trivial amount of money. The Turning Tumble might be just the ticket. It is play and that is the best way I know of to learn. I didn't have much of a chance to play with it and can't do a thorough review, but I'll probably end up buying one to give to a kid. The caveat is that you have to spend some time with it to learn. If the user doesn't find it fascinating enough to devote time to there won't be any learning. But the same can be said about so many things.
The education link on their site has the following in addition to a set of resources:
Appropriate Age Range
Turing Tumble is for ages 8 to adult - and that is not a stretch! We find that kids 8-12 are able to get through the first 20-30 puzzles. Adults get addicted by puzzle 27, and their minds are blown by puzzle 35. Younger kids enjoy the first 10 and building their own computers.
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