Intro to Interactive Media

Unlike conventional informative texts, this book is written in a very colloquial and humorous manner. With his funky analogies and rhetorical questions, Kenn Amdahl is able to effectively convey his message to the reader. The author was not wrong to claim that his reader will enjoy this book even if you have no special desire to learn about electricity. The text was indeed very enjoyable to read.

However, I do feel that the text could improve on its educational value. The very things that made the text interesting sometimes felt quite distracting. Moreover, some of his scientific explanations were rather vague and not all that informative.

Personally, I do prefer traditional textbooks when the objective is to acquire reliable academic information on a certain subject. Nonetheless, this was an interesting and entertaining read.

While strolling through the Baraha at 3am in the morning, I came across the pin ball machine. I gave it a couple tries and noticed that the LEDs lit up when the ball collided with certain areas in the apparatus.

Building on that concept, I created a simple maze that began in the top left corner and ended in the bottom right. When the ball (a ping pong ball wrapped in aluminum foil) reached the end of the maze, it will bridge together the two pieces of aluminum foil that are connected to the LED circuit.

It took me a few tries to get the end-of-maze foil dimensions/placement correct as the surface area in which the ball is actually in contact with the surface is quite small. The ball had to be right in the middle of the two pieces of foil in order for the circuit to be complete.

The following is a demonstration of the maze in action:

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Little Green men called “Greenies” were something I did not think I would read about when it comes to electricity in a university setting. I found this reading to be a pleasant surprise, as the information about electricity was conveyed to me in a genuinely interesting manner.

There were no boring statements in the text, as it was full of imagery and metaphors. I even shared some excerpts of the texts with friends, as I found them to be so whimsical but accurate of the things they were describing.

Not only that, but this text helped clear up a lot of the basics of electricity for me. In class I have used Ohm’s Law before, and calculated resistance in a circuit but I had never had some of these basic concepts defined for me. Things like static electricity and voltage; and not only were they defined for me, but were given to me with entertaining and memorable imagery.

Kenn Amdahl succeeded in his intent to make a non-dull, understandable book on electricity, because I truly want to read more.

 

Our assignment was to create a switch that doesn’t require the use of hands, and one that doesn’t use any programming. So I started off brainstorming different ways of interacting with the switch, and then afterwards what kind of outputs I can get and use.

Eventually I settled on the idea of blowing as the input, and the use of a motor as the output. I started testing out different ways and materials that I can use to complete a switch with just blowing air. Whatever I used needed to meet 2 criteria:

1. It had to be conductive
2. It had to be elastic, as in it had to move when blown on, but return to place when the blowing stops.

After some trial and error with wooden sticks and aluminum foil, I decided on this:

You blow on the hanging piece of cardboard wrapped in foil, and it’ll make contact with the stationary piece of cardboard wrapped in foil. In order to not make the hanging piece of cardboard hefty, the current is transferred through copper tape to the top wooden stick, also wrapped in foil, where the alligator clips connects this piece to the rest of the circuit.

As for the output, I scoured the IM lab for parts and found an already 3D printed fan that attaches to the DC motor. So I came up with the idea of the blowback machine! You blow to activate it and it blows back at you. Here is the final product:

And the circuit diagram:

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As someone who rarely meddles with the sciences and tries to avoid the confusion of trying to understand it, this reading broke down the concepts of electricity quite clearly to me. The reading was light-hearted and easy to read; the writing was simple which left room to try and understand the concepts more clearly. At some points I did feel quite confused as to what the author was trying to get to from his stories, but then he would manage to tie his ideas together quite nicely.

Although the ideas do come together at the end, I feel as though his intense motivation to oppose the electron theory and be different was more distracting than anything. To be completely fair though, I did grasp the concepts presented and understand the language and meanings associated with electricity.

When I started reading the book, I got excited by the concept of it. I spent years upon years reading maths, physics, and chemistry textbooks and more often than not they are incredibly confusing for someone who is not very familiar with the topics explained. If I had read “x is left as an exercise for the reader” one more time, I would’ve quit STEM altogether. However I found these series of books by this company, CGP, that did a great job at explaining complicated concepts in an approachable and fun way. I thought this book was going to be similar to that, however it wasn’t. Amdahl does a poor job at explaining the concepts in my opinion, and the book is riddled with fillers. He spent 4 pages setting up the greenie analogy which were entirely fillers! What I’m trying to say is, I can see why this book was rejected by 89 publishers. After a certain amount of “no”s, the world is not wrong, you are.

As someone who studied physics in high school, this reading is a super enlightening and fun refresher. As Ross mentioned, rather than having a list of facts like most non-fiction textbooks seem to be, Amdahl writes in a more colloquial and easy-to-understand manner that incorporates a lot of simple examples that make understanding the electron theory a lot easier.

This reading reminded me a lot of what my physics teacher used to teach us. He also described current to be “traffic” and voltage similar to “need to party” but rather as the “need to get down the slide” – with the “slide” referring to the circuit. When the need gets bigger, the first “person” is able to be pushed down the slide and the chain reaction continues. The traffic would, therefore, be how many “people” are going down that slide

I think perhaps the most interesting part of this reading was the fact that he seems to dispute the electron theory – “you must smile and agree with them. Don’t confront them, not yet”. The introduction of Greenies, to me, symbolised the idea that “contradictions [don’t stop] any other scientific theor[ies]”, in other words, meaning that there are always new ideas and theories that can introduce the concepts of electricity and magnetism.

Overall, I really enjoyed Amdahl use of humour and analogies to teach a physics concept to a wider audience.

Personally I quite disliked this reading, largely because as a physics major I have studied electricity before, and felt that the problems he identified showed a lack of of understanding on his part, rather than problems with the theory itself. I have no problem with attempting to explain things in simpler or more clever ways, but his approach in particular actually conveys misinformation. My biggest gripe is very fundamental, and has nothing to do with electron theory. He misrepresents the type of information that physics provides. For instance, he complains that it only answers “how?”, not “why?”. This is not a problem with electron theory it is an intentional and necessary part of physics, the techniques of any natural science are not suited to answer the question “why?”.  At other times he complains that the electron doesn’t seem real because the attributes assigned it by electron theory don’t intuitively seem like attributes of real things, such as a poorly defined position. My problem with this is that intuition is misleading, and lack of well defined positions for anything, not just electrons is one of the most well “proven” theories in physics. I am sure that his eventual description of greenies is useful to anyone who is new to electricity or not mathematically minded, but I had so many issues with his preface that I could not bring myself to appreciate it.

It takes forever to know whether your water is actually going up your straw? Wanna look cool and different than everyone else even though you are doing the exact same thing? Or you just want to add some more fun to your mundane sipping experience? Look no further than the Super Straw!

You will know your water is half way through your straw for sure when the blue light is turned on because electric current passes through the liquid from one end of the wire to the other.

It took me a while to think of ideas so I just tried out some everyday objects that conduct electricity, including tin foil, coins, copper tape, cactus and water.

Then I entertained the idea of using water as a conductor. However, in the beginning, the light was too dim. So I dissolved a lot of salt in the water and the water became more conductive.

Now enjoy a little demonstration of the magic of Super Straw with music!!

“There are no electrons” by Kenn Amdahl provides me with a new perspective of how an educational book could be written. It was a very easy and fun read since a lot of it was stories rather than plain instructions and descriptions. I know effective story-telling is the best way to reach people emotionally, but I did not know a good story can also teach people the fundamentals of the electron theory and challenge this presently well-accepted theory at the same time.

Most of the time, the author not only explains what things are, but also why they are what they are, how they came to be and what flaws there are in a light-hearted way. For example,  the “positive” and “negative” current” could as well be called “Bartholomeow” and “Afred” and they wouldn’t be less accurate.

The biggest feature of this snippet of text is perhaps that it ridicules the electron theory and the entire scientific community. There are still many unexplainable behaviours and phenomena involving electrons, yet we are too indulged in our “scientific advancement” to challenge some of the “fundamental” theories anymore. After all, they are only “theories”.

The biggest surprise for me is that I actually remember a lot about the electron theory even though the article seems to be anti- electron theory. From now on, I will replace voltage with “need-to-party” and current with “traffic”.