Koncocoo

Best Teen & Young Adult Inventions

Programming Arduino: Getting Started with Sketches, Second Edition (Tab)
• Understand Arduino hardware fundamentals. • Set up the software, power up your Arduino, and start uploading sketches. • Learn C language basics. • Add functions, arrays, and strings to your sketches. • Program Arduino’s digital and analog inputs and outputs. • Use functions from the standard Arduino library. • Write sketches that can store data. • Interface with displays, including OLEDs and LCDs. • Connect to the Internet and configure Arduino as a Web server. • Develop interesting programs for the Internet of Things. • Write your own Arduino libraries and use object-oriented programming methods. Simon Monk has a degree in cybernetics and computer science and a Ph.D. in software engineering.
Reviews
"Unfortunately, the usual books for "helping" with Arduino give sketches and explain bits and pieces without ever doing an overview of the system. Just got it today and have read over half of it; I've marked it up with pen to remind myself of crucial facts that I wish I had known a few months back. It's written at just the right level for beginners who are just learning about Arduino and microprocessors in general, and he points you to all the resources on the web for further information. So instead of having to copy and paste everyone else's code all the time, read this book to understand at least the basics of WHY things work in an Arduino the way they do."
"Great little book, excellent place to get started with Arduino."
"A good book to get you started with Arduino programming!"
"Useful lecture for introducing yourself in this world."
"Easy to understand and get familiar with Arduino world."
"I got this for a friend who had just started assembling boards using Adruino."
"Too many other books and tutorials just tell you to build a circuit and watch it do it's thing without explaining why it does it and how to expand on that design. I look forward to starting the "Next Steps" sequal and continuing to learn what this little chunk of organized metal and plastic has in store."
"I purchased this book, along w Programming Arduino Next Steps: Going Further with Sketches, for an Intro to Microcontrollers course i took."
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DIY Drones for the Evil Genius: Design, Build, and Customize Your Own Drones
DIY Drones for the Evil Genius: Design, Build, and Customize Your Own Drones not only covers safety, mechanics, drone design, and assembly, but also teaches the basics of Aerospace Engineering. Ian, a Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree, is an MIT graduate and has been building things since he first fell in love with computer engineering.
Reviews
"Finally, with this I can begin my plans to take over the TRI STATE AREA!"
"I admit I skipped ahead a bit straight to building the drone, but the first section was a great reference later when I was curious about why it was flying."
"For me, I was admittedly after more of the "get your hands dirty" portions of the book to get right in and start building my own drone after "outgrowing" my more "toy" drone. In conclusion, the reader can immerse themselves in as much or little of the theory needed to build their own drone, or more likely, come back to the theory later on as building and flying the drone progresses and the interest level for the theory increases. I look forward to progressing towards the start of building my first drone which is anticipated shortly, having confidence that the book will provide such a broad amount of information, but most important, knowing that the author openly is making himself availble via email to help, making this home-built drone nothing short of a success."
"The book not only tells you how to build drones but exactly what each part of the drone does."
"That way whoever you give the book to can start building immediately!"
"This book covers more than how to build and repair a quadcopter, it gives an insight into how and why things fly and stay aloft fixed wings and multi-rotors."
"This is good book and there were no issues with delivery. The book has good section on theory of flight."
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20 Makey Makey Projects for the Evil Genius
• No prior programming or technical experience is required. • Basic enough for beginners, but challenging enough for advanced makers. • Written by two educators who believe in fostering creative innovation for all. Colleen Graves is a high school librarian and blogger, obsessed with Learning Commons transformations, Makerspaces, technology education, making stuff, and getting girls involved in STEM.
Reviews
"Son loves this book."
"As a teacher, this is a great book!"
"The table of contents is extensive with each project and then broken down into the different parts of that project, making it easy to skip to what step you are on. Lots of Scratch is integrated into the projects and this is a good starter project not just for Makey Makey but also learning the basics of how to use Scratch to program your Makey Makey projects."
"I was attracted to the title of this book because it was for the Evil Genius and while my son doesn't consider himself an evil genius, he does like the idea of being a white-hat hacker or someone with the capability of wreaking mass-havoc on the universe, but choosing to do good rather than evil with his abilities. Unfortunately, in many ways, much like the Makey Makey itself, the book has languished and fallen victim to the ravages of a world filled with too little time to do everything you set out to accomplish each day and that world is also filled with Dan TDM videos that need watching and we just run out of time and don't get all of our 20 projects completed. If you felt like the original Makey Makey toy was a little too open ended and lacked instructions, then this makes up for that very well."
"Exciting Brain-Stimulating/Requires Makey Makey Kit and Good Hand Skills as Well As Computer Electronics. This set of Maker Skills for the Elementary School Set and Others is exciting and stimulating and makes good use of the Scratch Language developed at the MIT Media Lab."
"The book will guide you through the ups and downs of completing different projects, much like Sam helped Frodo through the Death Marshes on the way to Mordor. 20 Makey Makey Projects for the Evil Genius will help you defeat any fear you might have using code to create awesome projects, much like Sam defeated the evil spider Shelob who had paralyzed his good friend Frodo."
"I gave this to my 10 year old on his birthday and he loves picking out projects and going online to code."
"Requires a Makey Makey."
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Best Teen & Young Adult Crafts

Boys' Guide to Drawing (Drawing Cool Stuff)
Fans of sci-fi movies and action-packed TV shows will flip for this top-rated drawing guide by bestselling author and self-proclaimed fanboy Aaron Sauter. He enjoys learning and working on a wide range of subjects from pirates and robots to dragons, sports, and magic tricks.
Reviews
"He has shown an interest in drawing and asked for art supplies for Christmas."
"Great, great gift for boys who love warrior and anime type characters."
"This was a Christmas gift for my stepson and he has really enjoyed it!"
"So fun to watch my son use this -- little advanced for an 8 year old, but great options."
"My son thought that it was "cool"."
"I would recommend this for any boy who is into drawing!"
"This is not for a beginner and my 11 yo son found it discouraging till he just gave up and started tracing the pictures."
"Great delivery and product!"
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Best Teen & Young Adult Technology Nonfiction eBooks

Programming Arduino: Getting Started with Sketches, Second Edition (Tab)
You will learn how to configure hardware and software, develop your own sketches, work with built-in and custom Arduino libraries, and explore the Internet of Things—all with no prior programming experience required! Simon Monk has a degree in cybernetics and computer science and a Ph.D. in software engineering.
Reviews
"Unfortunately, the usual books for "helping" with Arduino give sketches and explain bits and pieces without ever doing an overview of the system. Just got it today and have read over half of it; I've marked it up with pen to remind myself of crucial facts that I wish I had known a few months back. It's written at just the right level for beginners who are just learning about Arduino and microprocessors in general, and he points you to all the resources on the web for further information. So instead of having to copy and paste everyone else's code all the time, read this book to understand at least the basics of WHY things work in an Arduino the way they do."
"I bought this book to just to have the first book along side the "Next Steps" book."
"The explanations seem good to me but I may not be the best judge having forty years of programming experience."
"Nice programming guide for Arduino but was hoping for something more kid friendly."
"Great little book, excellent place to get started with Arduino."
"A good book to get you started with Arduino programming!"
"Useful lecture for introducing yourself in this world."
"Easy to understand and get familiar with Arduino world."
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Best Scientific Experiments & Projects

Make: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery
--Hans Camenzind, inventor of the 555 timer (the world's most successful integrated circuit), and author of Much Ado About Almost Nothing: Man's Encounter with the Electron (Booklocker.com). --Tom Igoe, author of Physical Computing and Making Things Talk. A new shopping guide and a simplified range of components, will minimize your investment in parts for the projects. A completely new section on the Arduino shows you how to write properly structured programs instead of just downloading other people's code. Projects have been reworked to provide additional features, and the book has been restructured to offer a step-by-step learning process that is as clear and visually pleasing on handheld devices as it is on paper. Hans Camenzind, inventor of the 555 Timer (the world's most successful integrated circuit chip), said that "This is teaching at its best!" He is the author of the highly successful introductory hands-on book, Make:Electronics, and is writing a sequel to that book in addition to volumes 2 and 3 of the Encyclopedia of Electronic Components.
Reviews
"I was an engineering student in college (although not electrical engineering) so I was always kind of upset that after spending countless nights of my life doing all sorts of crazy math problems with respect to circuits, I didn't know something as simple as how a relay works, or how to build anything except maybe a simple circuit with a lightbulb and a resistor. This won't make you an expert in electronics, it is definitely on the simple side of things (like algebraic simplifications of mathematical models that are actually rooted in calculus or differential equations), but that's exactly what I was looking for. Seems steep but if you plan on making use of your new-found knowledge for the foreseeable future, you will be using these tools well after you've worked through this book."
"Challenge his tech skills without been overwhelming."
"great book for learning the basics."
"Fun book, I plan on buying a ket to try out the expereiments."
"Informative yet simple."
"Of course you need to know electronics!"
"This book's layout kept me turning it's pages to learn more."
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Best Single Board Computers

Exploring Raspberry Pi: Interfacing to the Real World with Embedded Linux
This book helps you get the most from your Raspberry Pi, but it also gives you the fundamental engineering skills you need to incorporate any electronics into any project. Develop the Linux and programming skills you need to build basic applications Build your inventory of parts so you can always "make it work" Understand interfacing, controlling, and communicating with almost any component Explore advanced applications with video, audio, real-world interactions, and more. Finally, you'll discover how to use the Raspberry Pi for advanced interfacing and interaction applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT); wireless communication and control; rich user interfaces; images, video, and audio; and Linux kernel programming. Develop essential Linux and programming skills Build Internet of Things (IoT) applications Master interfacing, controlling, and communication Design applications that interact with the physical environment Utilize the Arduino platform as a service processor Build wireless communication applications Write and install a custom Linux loadable kernel module Apply the Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi Zero to your projects.
Reviews
"Very good book on the inner workings of the RPi."
"Great book!"
"It covered all aspects of the the raspberry Pi in a straight forward, concise manner."
"Covers a lot of material that is helpful for real time projects."
"Really a very good book!!"
"I agree the the traditional paper book deserves the 5 star rating. The Kindle edition only has a 2 level outline, no sub topics, making it extremely cumbersome, if not useless, as a navigation tool. So minimal table of contents and no index makes the Kindle edition pretty useless as a convenient reference."
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Best Digital Design

Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition
Resistors, capacitors, inductors, and transformers Diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits Optoelectronics, solar cells, and phototransistors Sensors, GPS modules, and touch screens Op amps, regulators, and power supplies Digital electronics, LCD displays, and logic gates Microcontrollers and prototyping platforms Combinational and sequential programmable logic DC motors, RC servos, and stepper motors Microphones, audio amps, and speakers Modular electronics and prototypes. He is an inventor/hobbyist in electronics, an area he grew to appreciate through his experience at the University’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics and the Department of Plasma Physics.
Reviews
"It's a shame too, since I thought the index was well laid out, liked the hot links within the text that take you to other referenced sections of the book and know that the content of the paper edition is probably outstanding. I've also added a couple of images from the physical and the kindle edition of the book to illustrate the issue that I'm talking about."
"I teach an introductory class in electronics at a small university. However, there were some notable gaps in the Second Edition that I typically teach in an electronics class; specifically, I teach a section on transducers and microcontrollers. I've been using the Arduino for class the last couple of years because most scientists would use a microcontroller to design a piece of equipment instead of discrete gates and logic chips. The chapters are designed to be somewhat modular; for instance, I can teach the basics of analog electronics and transistors and then move to microcontrollers without necessarily having to spend a lot of time time on discrete logic chips."
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Best Computer Programming

Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions
And as such, I know what it's like to be asked to whip up brilliant algorithms on the spot and then write flawless code on a whiteboard. Learn how to uncover the hints and hidden details in a question, discover how to break down a problem into manageable chunks, develop techniques to unstick yourself when stuck, learn (or re-learn) core computer science concepts, and practice on 189 interview questions and solutions. Extensive coverage of essential topics, such as big O time, data structures, and core algorithms. At Google, she interviewed hundreds of software engineers and evaluated thousands of hiring packets on the hiring committee.
Reviews
"The DP solutions in this book are not actually tabular DP formulations--I recommend looking at the problems here http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~bcdean/dp_practice/ (Brian Dean's Dynamic Programming Practice Problems)."
"The main reason I bought the book is that it closely reflects the status quo of the technical interviews in large tech companies. For many of the problems, unless you know the solutions beforehand, there is no way you can code up a decent one within an hour. The book mentions an example, a good candidate whom the author knows very well but just cannot pass the coding interviews. I am guessing the assumption is that the coding problems we do nowadays on the interviews somehow achieve minimal number of false positives. One solution reduces the problem to checking for substrings. The author claims the time complexity is O(m+n), which I believe for Java is actually O(mn). Overall this is good book for preparing for coding interviews."
"I've been writing software for a long time, and I'm competent at my job. Because the presence of books like these create a vicious cycle: prep book gets written; interviewees study/memorize answers; interviewers make questions "harder" to compensate; new book gets written! The grinder continues to turn, and whereas ten years ago you could get a good job with some string or linked-list manipulation questions, now you've got people who consider whiteboard coding of topcoder elite questions to be the baseline measurement of programmer competency. You'll even run into lazy interviewers who take questions directly from this book, which is the ultimate in stupidity: if "good" candidates have prepared from the book, and you ask questions directly from the book, what are you really accomplishing, other than a test of memorization skills? I've seen it myself."
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Best Teen & Young Adult Agriculture

Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science
When this award-winning husband-and-wife team discovered that they each had sugar in their family history, they were inspired to trace the globe-spanning story of the sweet substance and to seek out the voices of those who led bitter sugar lives. Framed by the authors’ family connections to the subject, the chapters move from New Guinea, where humans are believed to have first cultivated sugar cane 10,000 years ago, to its spread across the ancient world.
Reviews
"I enjoyed "How Sugar Changed the World....." enough to cause me to use part of my vacation to go on a tour of a sugar plantation on Maui and the adjacent Sugar Museum to learn more about the business in the Hawaiian Islands. Little did I know that the adds were placed to cause consumers to believe that cane sugar was superior to sugar beet sugar."
"This was an interesting book that goes through the history of sugar and the impact it has had on the world."
"An excellent history that ties together the history of sweetness in numerous countries, cultures, and motivations of the worldwide expansion and development of the sugar industry."
"I bought this book for my granddaughter/son, but read it before handing it off."
"Chosen by my 12 year old for summer reading for school."
"Learning the historical background of this ubiquitous sweet commodity, as well as its influence on people and past world affairs (i.e. "globalization"), is easily accomplished by reading this one text."
"Amazingly, the style and arrangement make the book suitable for a wide range of readers, from novice high school students to their teachers and professors."
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Best Teen & Young Adult How Things Work

The Way Things Work Now
Famously packed with information on the inner workings of everything from windmills to Wi-Fi, this extraordinary and humorous book both guides readers through the fundamental principles of machines, and shows how the developments of the past are building the world of tomorrow. It is a very handsome book, a fascinating collection of riddles and a sound educational accomplishment that, while explaining in words and pictures - mostly pictures - some of the mysteries of physics, makes you smile, and often laugh. The author is honest enough to say that the book was intended for children of all ages, and brilliant enough to make all its readers feel brighter than they ever thought they could be.”— The New York Times “ The Way Things Work is not the only book that has tried to explain modern mysteries, but it's the best. “Keep the book a secret from your kids for a while and study up on the explanations of questions you're anticipating.
Reviews
"I'm unusually attached to this book: I laid my hands on the earlier edition as a very young child, and it probably shaped my interests more than anything else - ultimately setting me on a very interesting and rewarding life path."
"This book was tailor made for our young grandson who is very smart!"
"My 10 Year old friend, Loves the book, so I would say the book is an excellent one."
"I'll admit, we've been carefully enjoying it (ourselves) before we gift wrap it - hahaha!!"
"Great book."
"My husband LOVED this book as a child."
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Best Teen & Young Adult Machinery & Tools

The Way Things Work Now
Famously packed with information on the inner workings of everything from windmills to Wi-Fi, this extraordinary and humorous book both guides readers through the fundamental principles of machines, and shows how the developments of the past are building the world of tomorrow. It is a very handsome book, a fascinating collection of riddles and a sound educational accomplishment that, while explaining in words and pictures - mostly pictures - some of the mysteries of physics, makes you smile, and often laugh. The author is honest enough to say that the book was intended for children of all ages, and brilliant enough to make all its readers feel brighter than they ever thought they could be.”— The New York Times “ The Way Things Work is not the only book that has tried to explain modern mysteries, but it's the best. “Keep the book a secret from your kids for a while and study up on the explanations of questions you're anticipating.
Reviews
"I'm unusually attached to this book: I laid my hands on the earlier edition as a very young child, and it probably shaped my interests more than anything else - ultimately setting me on a very interesting and rewarding life path."
"This book was tailor made for our young grandson who is very smart!"
"My 10 Year old friend, Loves the book, so I would say the book is an excellent one."
"I'll admit, we've been carefully enjoying it (ourselves) before we gift wrap it - hahaha!!"
"I love that it gives stories with the information."
"Great book."
"My husband LOVED this book as a child."
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Best Teen & Young Adult Air & Space Science

Space!
is packed with amazing facts and NASA images revealing the wonders of the cosmos — from black holes to the big bang to the planets.
Reviews
"Our 8 year old LOVES this book!"
"I am buying these for my 7 year old grandson, and he is an advanced reader, plus he really enjoys reading and learning all that is available to him."
"Wonderful book for kids of all ages."
"Amazingbook with beautiful pictures and explanations."
"It was a gift for an 8th grader."
"I love DK books."
"Great buy!"
"Wonderful book."
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Best Teen & Young Adult Electricity & Electronics

How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic, Second Edition
Choose the proper tools and set up your workbench Ensure personal safety and use proper eye and ear protection Understand how electrical components work and why they fail Perform preliminary diagnoses based on symptoms Use test equipment, including digital multimeters, ESR meters, frequency counters, and oscilloscopes Interpret block, schematic, and pictorial diagrams Disassemble products and identify sections Analyze circuits, locate faults, and replace dead parts Re-establish connections and reassemble devices. His involvement in ham radio led to his writing career, first with articles for ham radio magazines, and then with general technology features in Electronic Engineering Times, Desktop Engineering, IEEE Spectrum, and The Envisioneering Newsletter. Along with building and repairing electronic circuitry, he enjoys table tennis, restoring antique mopeds, ice skating, bicycling, and banging out a jazz tune on his harpsichord.
Reviews
"I NEVER thought of circuits this way and the author was able to explain that the active elements are the players in the story and everything else is a supporting cast. Bottom line, this is the book that I couldn't put down...and it is about some of the driest material you can find. I cannot recommend this book enough and I would pay triple just for the section where the author walks through a couple sample circuits, describes each component's function, and what would happen if that component failed."
"So far, there are many helpful tips and information to help me further the hobby along."
"Well written and organized."
"Read it slowly and use it as a reference."
"B&W pictures of some of the older devices are understandable but most of the pictures could've easily been replaced with new coloured ones."
"Good book that gives some insight to those new to troubleshooting."
"the Item Excellent and the seller is good thank you."
"Informative!"
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