I’m really looking for some things to ask for that would help expand my knowledge in these areas for Christmas. In areas like electrical engineering, engineering, astrophysics, mathematics, and computer science.
I love self learning things, for example I’m reading Cosmos by Carl Sagan and I am going to read A Brief History of Time by Stephan Hawking to expand my knowledge on astrophysics. I also am self-learning the programming langauge Python at the current moment.
Ask for an ardiuno (check spelling) and some kits to make small robotics. Also learn welding. Check to see if there are any makerplaces in your area. If you live near Columbus- there is “The Foundry” which is like makerplace and you could ask to take classes there.
The Arduino and Pi are really good suggestions. If they’re interested in circuit design, you may also want to get an FPGA development board. If not for the holidays, maybe down the road.
They’re definitely pricier ($100-$150), but you can do some really sick stuff with them if you’re willing to pick up Verilog/SystemVerilog or VHDL (I’d recommend SystemVerilog for beginners), and it can be really cool because you quite literally code hardware.
Radio shack sells basic soldering kits for $20 each. They are pretty fun. One is a mini amp another is a game. The soldering iron set was $10 and you can get as many kits as you like. There are over 40 to choose from
I got several books for Christmas! My favorites are The Birth of a Theorem (Cedric Villani) and the Math Book (Clifford Pickover)! The former’s structured more like a novel whereas the latter is similar to trivia books (one topic per spread?). I’ve also heard great things about xkcd’s Thing Explainer, which looks interesting!
