Gift Ideas For Young Engineers

gifts.md

• Leatherman for young'ins ($54) Comes with the knife blade detached which can be added when 'earned:' http://gearjunkie.com/leatherman-leap-kids-multi-tool
• Weather Lab ($15) This is more science oriented. Science can be boring at times, but carefully noting numbers and charting phenomenon to find correlation is a concept all should understand. www.smartlabtoys.com/you-track-it-weather-lab.html
• Robo Link A ($25) Kit that builds five robot variations. It's not an intelligent (interactive) robot. It's mean to learn bout gears (mechanical engineering). www.makershed.com/products/robo-link-a
• Lego Mindstorms EV3 ($350) shop.lego.com/en-US/LEGO-MINDSTORMS-EV3-31313 Ultimate lego kit, comes with motors, sensors and programmable controller which allows you to write programs and built ultimately anything (robots, machines, etc.). You can use their graphical programming language or venture out into RobotC, which is C-based. Make serious robots without electronics to get in the way.
• Flexbot ($70) Cheap quadrocopter, not a use-straight-out-of-the-box consumer product IMO. Looks like it would require quite a bit of debugging and effort to get going and fix upon crash. Possibly very frustrating flexbot.cc
• Erector Multimodels Set ($40) Other versions out there too. Comes with standardized metal parts, screws, motor and lots of ideas for building things. amzn.com/B0052PXPU0
• Physics Workshop ($55) It's the chemistry set of physics. thamesandkosmos.com/products/pw/pw2.html
• Chemistry Set ($250) Seems more like a curriculum than a kit. Cheaper kits are available too. thamesandkosmos.com/products/chem/chemc3000.html
• Trebuchet Kit ($25) Once the pinnacle of engineering technology, the only machine capable of tossing insanely massive objects over and through thick castle walls. This is a learning toy, make adjustments to improve distance, learn the physics, etc.. www.makershed.com/products/trebuchet-kit
• Makezine ($79) - Year subscription of a maker magazine. It's a pretty good magazine, I get it and enjoy it. makezine.com
• Loniel Polar Train Set G-Guage ($135) Not the hardcore Loniel collectors quality, but a working plastic track train set. Controls are R/C http://amzn.com/B000GL1EEE
• Estes Model Rocket ($10-$50) I built a difficult one when I was a kid and it was incredibly satisfying... but there are also ready to launch rockets for ~$15. Make sure whatever you get also includes a launch pad, or get it separately. www.estesrockets.com