Customer Ratings & Reviews

Don't plan on throwing this at your 12 year-old and walking away. All the resistors, capacitors and diodes are unsorted and unmarked. The instructions provided for identifying them are challenging to say the least. It explains how to decode "104," etc, which is faintly visible on the capacitor with a magnifying glass if you hold it just right to the light. But you have to do the math, nowhere does it say that "104"= 0.1 microfarad. IE, they explain how to decode but do not decode for you. I did! See photo. There are 36 groups of resistors that you have to sort by the color banding. Those colors can seem to change as you catch the light differently, yellow can be hard to see. At least ones of the same value are taped together. It took me three hours to sort out parts. Now that said, the few things I've done since then work as advertised. I just wonder how long I can keep pushing these delicate wires protruding out of the capacitors in and out of the project board until they snap. Still, I think there is a lot of value here to the budding scientist, and I wish I had one when I was a kid. As an adult, years ago, I had a Radio Shack project kit. Much more durable. The components were all mounted and you connected them via spring contacts. Those kits no longer exist, hence I got this one. Finally, unknown to me when I ordered this, there is a 500 in one kit referred to in the manual. You might one to compare that with this before ordering. Finally finally, this kit appears to be sold under several names at several prices. They seem identical and this was as good a price as you will find with the free shipping to local store.

Children, electricity, and physics do not mix. Don't rely on website descriptions or reviews because this product may be marketed to kids, but electricity and physics are highschool level and above.