I just got a NerdKit today, and I’m excited to start playing (as soon as I find my wire cutters).  But even just reading through their guide (which is part textbook part hands-on lab manual), is fun.

Stuff like this still amazes me (think of all the chemistry, materials science, and engineering that went into this):

The Crystal Oscillator:

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“Inside the metal can is a little thin piece of quartz grown so that it vibrates at exactly 14.7465 MHz. Just like a tuning fork is cut just right to oscillate at a certain frequency, this produces a very reliable clock signal that the chip follows when executing instructions.”