Science Sunday: take apart a computer

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For whatever reason we had about 3 computers that have died over the past several years that have sat in our house waiting for us to do something with them.

 

That day came last week.  Actually it came about when I complained Jeff threw away the first one without letting the kids take it apart.  I had just assumed he read my mind and KNEW I wanted them to do that.

 

learning how to take apart a computer

First they had to figure out all the details of how to open it.  Each computer has its own method of opening, and each manufacturer uses a different method.  Dell at the time we got these computers

engineering for kids: take apart a computer

This was especially interesting to my kids because they know “Daddy works with computers,” but not too much what that means, and what is inside a computer.

engineering for kids: take apart a computer

After the first computer Jeff let the boys have at it (Princess wasn’t interested at first).  They banged and explored to their hearts content.

 

engineering for kids: take apart a computer

Then they started to collect up the various parts for “craft projects”  I still don’t know quite what that means, but they’re nicely contained in a box, and I look forward to seeing what they think up.

engineering for kids: take apart a computer

They’ve dug out the pieces from time to time to play with them.  Princess wants to keep the monitor and keyboard in her room so she can have a pretend computer…  That didn’t happen much to her dismay.

How about you, have you ever taken apart an old appliance with your kids?  For the longest time we had an old lawnmower sitting in our garage and that was also gotten rid of recently.  I’d toyed with taking that apart, but I could also see the ER trips coming from that……..


Comments

10 responses to “Science Sunday: take apart a computer”

  1. Hi, ooops my picture didn’t show up- not sure why!! My first time linking up- thanks for hosting!

  2. We so need to do it one of these days. I think we might still have at least one to disassemble.

  3. What a great activity! That’s actually how my oldest learned to build one – which he did, from scratch, at age 8 (and it’s still running 12 years later). Good for you for letting them explore, and for letting them keep the parts for future projects! You never know what they’ll create.

  4. Thanks for hosting the linky! We love Science Sunday.

    1. I love hosting it! It’s fun to do.

  5. maryanne @ mama smiles Avatar
    maryanne @ mama smiles

    The kids took a laptop apart with Mike a year or so ago. We haven’t had a broken desktop to take apart, yet. Mike takes anything he can apart, so I’m sure they’ll tackle the desktop as soon as it breaks (hopefully not for a while, though!

    1. I know what you mean. We just had a bad conflux where two of our older computers both died at the same time.

  6. It is so much fun to look inside a computer, and build one up.

    1. It was really fun to see. We’d never done that before and they were so excited.

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