alt Hacker NewsThat's such a pity. Building a simple AM radio receiver was a simplest and coolest electronics project to do with kids.
You need two transistors, a ferrite coil and a small set of simpler elements. And it is so simple you can actually explain what every part of the circuit does.
And then the reward... Once built you could listen to BBC regardless of where you are in Europe. My kids just LOVED IT, no Netflix K-Drama replaces this experience. My daughter was listening to BBC on her radio every night going to sleep.
Replies
We did that in my physics high school class.
Then we took away components until we had virtually nothing left, a diode I think(?), and still we had some signal.
Turns out there was a transmitter on the top of the hill the school was also on.
Fun times.
Look at this fancy pants needing a transistor for that /s
(but yes I do miss those simpler days - but I guess the basics now is making an Arduino flash an LED)
Hmmm, fancy indeed. With 150kW feeding a dipole at 700 feet, I imagine that a cat's-whisker [0] would have done well-enough in London...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_detector