About Marvin's Tech Lab

I was young in the 60s - a time when Space Fever gripped everyone, and every kid played with crystal radios and erector sets, and every kid dreamed of building rockets. Science was exciting, and people were enthralled by it.

Sometime not too long after Neil Armstrong bounced around on that dry Sea of Tranquility, we all lost interest in things technical.

Thirty-some years later, almost every family in America has at least one computer (more likely several) that is more powerful than the entire array of computers used to monitor and control Apollo 11's flight. And a drawerful of pocket calculators each more powerful than the best room-sized computers of the 70s. But ask them to use either one to figure out how many yards of dirt they need to fill their gardens, and most of them won't have the foggiest notion of where to begin.

Today we fly across the continent as casually as we used to walk across the street. But ask anyone what holds an airplane in the air and you're likely to get a blank stare. Today every adult and teenager has a cellphone and we can reach anyone in the world at a moment's notice. But ask anyone what a phone has to do with cells, and you'll get that same blank stare. Today we have instant access to news and pictures from around the globe, but ask anyone why those distant reporters continue to nod their heads and look like they're still listening for a second or two after the New York-based news anchor asks them a question, and there's that blank stare again...

A goal of Marvin's Tech Lab is to help to reverse that trend. It'll take the work and the interest of many people -- teachers, mentors, students, and "inspirers", to turn it around completely. Marvin's Tech Lab will publish projects, ideas, and resources to help with that process.

Marvin's Tech Lab will present here projects designed to inspire interest and to develop analytic and "synthesis" skills in young people, principally focused on those of middle school through college age. Projects will cover a broad range of scientific interest, and many will include the application of computers and small processors performing interface, control, or data gathering functions.

Projects will be presented in a logical stepwise fashion to permit small groups of interested youth working with guidance from adult supervisors to complete them satisfactorily. Enough background information will be presented to permit teachers to customize and extend the project when used in a classroom or extra-curricular setting.

And we'll do a few things that are just plain fun, too.

Ya gotta start somewhere...