Last school year, TARC volunteers taught the students at Saint John Catholic School in North Charleston about electronic components and radio propagation, including building crystal radios and transistor audio amplifiers from scratch on pine wood boards with screw terminals.
For this school year, the Principal, Karen Durand (KQ4TVY), asked us to take it a step further by having the 7th and 8th graders build kits using printed circuit boards so that they learn how to solder. The 5th and 6th graders would build the same kits, but using breadboards instead of PCBs.
As such, the TARC Education Committee decided on having the students build a multivibrator circuit, which is a two-stage resistance-coupled amplifier with positive feedback from the output of one amplifier to the input of the other, causing two LEDs to turn on and off in sequence.
The students were already familiar with how a transistor can be used as an amplifier, so the lesson was to teach them how transistors can be used as a switch, and about RC time constants to control the speed of how fast the transistors are switched on and off. The kits were donated by TARC. The soldering stations and tools were also purchased by TARC, but will remain the property of TARC.
On January 8 and 9, students built their own kits and every one of them worked. The glowing smiles on their faces was testament to their achievement. Our volunteers got to brush up on their soldering skills as well.
A special thank you goes out to TARC volunteers Steve Behr (K4OPZ), Helen Deitrick-Kovach (KJ4UGF), Mike Edwards (KI4TAC), Van Herridge (N4VGE), Michael Jordan (K3ZMD), Bob Kovach (KJ4UGE), Reid Rebingon, Glenn Stephens (WA4NMW), and Jim Wasson (KO4MNB) for a job well done!
