Note: This is one of my most instructive memories from 10th grade and has been dredged up from the murky past. By 10th grade I had already absorbed a book on the electronics of vacuum tube radios. At this time you could go to a drug store and find a vacuum tube tester which also had an inventory of common vacuum tubes shelved below the tester. If the tube you plucked out of the TV set failed the test, you could buy a replacement. A burned-out filament was common and easy to spot because the tube was not illuminated by the filament from inside and was dark.

Oh yes. The involuntary grunting noise is the sound one makes while being electrocuted.

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Make magazine is one of my very favorite publications. It’s made for hillbilly engineers and aspirants like myself.  Their Maker Shed Store offers kits as well as plans for making all sorts of cool gadgets.

Kit building and garage engineering are important activites for aspiring young scientists. We senior scientist types should be on the ready to mentor local high school students in their bid to learn about technology from the ground upwards.

Electronic experience is invaluable to all experimentalists- physicists, chemists, geologists, biologists, etc., and is a subject of lifelong utility. Many students do not have peer groups or family members who can help them get into this subject. [for many years I’ve trained new hires twice monthly in electrostatic discharge safety and am constantly amazed at how few people know even the most basic aspects of electricity. This includes drawing a schematic of a flashlight which led to the shrugging of shoulders.]

As a junior high school kid, I worked on TV sets (tube electronics) and acquired some electrical and mechanical ability in doing so. I actually fixed a few problems, surprisingly. A family friend had a TV repair shop (remember those?) and as a result I had a steady supply of TV chassis to take apart for my collection of parts like potentiometers, switches, vacuum tubes and variable capacitors.

Like most kids tearin’ stuff apart and eyeing the construction methods and components, I gained valuable electrical insights and personal experience with electrical current.  Like the time I discharged a picture tube through my hand while trying to remove a flyback transformer from my grandparent’s color TV. It was great lesson in capacitance and isolated static charge. As my grandparents sat on the Davenport and watched, they heard a sudden and involuntary grunting noise burst from my mouth as I hurled myself from a squatting position by the opened console TV set and backwards across the room. I probably absorbed more joules of energy from landing on my backside than the joules absorbed by my hand. Luckily, I was not burned. The next day I learned how to properly discharge the aquadag in the picture tube.

A strong electric shock is nothing at all like tangling with an vicious animal who might stand there after the altercation spent and panting, wondering in its little badger brain how to tear an even bigger chunk out of your leg. A discharged electrical device bears the same silent affect before as afterwards. It’s wicked electrons are inanimate and unparticular in their singular drive to find ground. An unexpected jolt from a device is much like a magical experience. It comes from nowhere and everywhere and is over in the blink of an eye. Afterwards you stand there in shock and awe of the effect of even modest amounts of energy.

The impulse to do science is also the impulse to find boundary conditions of phenomena. Where are the edges? How does it switch on or off? You have to be willing to leave some skin in the game to find out about things.