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Ellis Abel Learns.

In my own words · Round Rock, TX

Why I love electronics

Technicians in clean-room gear install guidance, navigation and control electronics boxes into the Juno spacecraft. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Electronics" page — read by families in Round Rock, TX.
Technicians in clean-room gear install guidance, navigation and control electronics boxes into the Juno spacecraft. NASA/JPL-Caltech · Public domain
  • Tiny parts doing exact jobs.
  • If one wire is loose, nothing works.
  • I can follow the path with my finger.

You can love electronics in Round Rock.

What it really is

Electronics routes small electric currents through parts that each do one job.

Three things to try today

  1. Open something broken and look inside.
  2. Find where the power comes in.
  3. Trace the path with your finger.
Technicians in clean-room gear install guidance, navigation and control electronics boxes into the Juno spacecraft. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Electronics" page — read by families in Round Rock, TX.
Technicians in clean-room gear install guidance, navigation and control electronics boxes into the Juno spacecraft. NASA/JPL-Caltech · Public domain

For the grown-up reading this

Round Rock is one of the cities the Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos, TX metro area is officially named after. The question is not whether Round Rock, TX has children who love electronics. It is whether anyone told them that counts as something.

Tracing the power path is circuit reading. Do it on something already broken.

If the kid who loves this is a girl

Read what one popular teacher said to one little girl who took out the classroom trash without being asked — and what that girl did with the rest of her life.

Girls are great at math — Round Rock, TX →

Love something else too

A technician sets up wiring and monitoring equipment at Launch Pad 39A for a shuttle tanking test. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Electricity" page — read by families in Round Rock, TX.Why I love electricityTwo rocket engine tests fire at once on the test stands at Stennis Space Center, throwing huge white exhaust plumes into the air. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Energy" page — read by families in Round Rock, TX.Why I love energyThe two-bladed Mod-1 wind turbine standing on its lattice tower on a hilltop at Boone, North Carolina. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Wind Power" page — read by families in Round Rock, TX.Why I love windAn orange-and-white Saildrone autonomous research vessel under sail on the water near San Francisco Bay. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Oceans" page — read by families in Round Rock, TX.Why I love the oceanA USGS cartographer bends over a light table, scribing contour lines by hand onto a topographic map separation. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Maps" page — read by families in Round Rock, TX.Why I love mapsA worker checks a replacement distillation assembly for the space station's water recycling system in a processing facility. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Recycling" page — read by families in Round Rock, TX.Why I love recyclingAn aerial photograph of the Vehicle Assembly Building under construction at Kennedy Space Center, its steel frame still open to the sky. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Building" page — read by families in Round Rock, TX.Why I love buildingAn aerial view of construction crews and barges working to complete the westbound span of the Indian River causeway bridge. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Bridges" page — read by families in Round Rock, TX.Why I love bridges

Near Round Rock

Why I love electronics, everywhere in the US · All things to love · STEM jobs you could do · Summer camps in Round Rock