TOBC Tech for Students

Tech and Jesus Working Together to Point Students to the Lord

John Engelbrecht, retired electrical engineer (not a Texas registered professional engineer), and members of Texas Oaks Baptist in south Austin work with children and youth

in a church setting to foster interest in technology. John's larger interest is to mentor youth in technology while pointing them to Jesus. John is a retired electrical engineer and DIYer/maker. John and wife Margaret have been members of SBC churches in Austin, Brownwood, Detroit, and Augusta GA.

We care for our grandchildren while our children and their spouses work in Austin and San Antonio. John also has a secondary teaching certificate. American culture, entertainment, and colleges pull youth away from Jesus, but the need is to get young people to take Jesus seriously.

This can be done by using tech activities as an attractor and by comparing culture with what the Bible teaches. All ages need to hear Jesus'

offer of forgiveness and respond to his offer. Those who accept Jesus' forgiveness can grow in their love for people through discipling programs.

Sidewalk Arduino

Since 2017, John offers free tech mentoring for students in the west Slaughter Lane area of Austin. Here are examples.

• Amps, volts, watts--melting wires, the feel of 1/2 watt and 1200 watts, fuses and circuit breakers, blow dryers and fire protection. Electrocution from a tiny current, .02 amp.

• Soldering

• The Grovetown Magnet, a DIY electromagnet. Compass. The magnets of the Large Hadron Collider at Geneva want to explode. Motor action of a magnet working on copper.

• Microphone amplifier made from transistors

• Light up LEDs

• Solar cells

• Etch your own printed circuit board

• Molecular modeling. Chemistry experiments that are safe but not as constrained as public schools are.

• Professional-grade electronic instruments include Tektronix DPO 2002B oscilloscope

• Arduino programming

• Ubuntu as alternative to Microsoft Windows

By arrangement, sessions with home-school students, ages 4th grade and up. Dec 20 2016 session was for soldering and electromagnets using detailed learning objectives so that key things were learned.

Contact

johnenge@earthlink.net (512) 773-9266 12311 Culebra Road #6104 San Antonio

Fun with technology is coupled with Bible study that students participate in:

• When Nicodemus talked to Jesus at night, he had a political motive

• People in the West seek radical autonomy but dependence on Jesus gives true satisfaction. See footnote 1.

• Why college professors spread atheism--Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson

• Jesus started creation by designing the human brain; your body is there just to carry around your brain

• Astronomers (cosmologists) are confronted by fine tuning of the universe (anthropic coincidences)--Martin Rees' Just Six Numbers

• Mutations interfere with evolution--evolution is false but speciation is true. Michael J. Behe's Darwin's Black Box.

• Bible is reliable, it was not corrupted by translation through successive translations through Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, French, English; Jesus quotes Old Testament

• Parents who keep their children away from church aren't rescuing them from prejudice, they are keeping their children in ignorance

Progress

Starting in January 2017, with support of Pastor James and his wife Cathy, I have had Wedn. 7 P.M. Tech and Truth. We have a short Bible study and a technology session. Students always want to get outside, also. Pastor James is an electrical engineer and design manager for integrated circuits.

References

http://www.meetup.com/Austin-Maker-Ed-Meetup/

https://sites.google.com/site/solderandcircuits/https://sites.google.com/site/solderandcircuits/home/more-circuit-design/physics-timelinehttps://sites.google.com/site/solderandcircuits/home/more-circuit-design/physics-timeline/physics-time-line-1900-present/morals-shown-in-physics-timeline Take Christian spirituality seriously, see "essays" near bottom of this web page: https://sites.google.com/site/solderandcircuits/home/more-circuit-design Who is John? https://sites.google.com/site/solderandcircuits/home/who-is-the-instructor

You are reading https://sites.google.com/site/solderandcircuits/home/tobc-tech-for-students

Does It Matter?

Does it matter what you believe? Plenty of people on TV say it doesn't matter; we are chance creations, there is nothing beyond the grave,

and you may as well grab all you can in this life. Wealthy men of this mind grab all the women they can and live it up. If these people hear

about Jesus, they consider Jesus to be a waste of time, because Jesus to them means restrictions: "I would have to be good."

To a person who takes the Bible seriously, the consequence of what you believe is the difference between Heaven and Hell, love and hopelessness,

grace and fate. So many people have led half their lives in ignorance of Jesus and have found that life is terrible, then they find Jesus' forgiveness

and it turns their life around. This is why every person, as early in their life as they can, needs to hear about Jesus, accept his forgiveness, and be

his disciple.

Footnotes

1 Since 1937, the U.T. Austin Tower Plaza is greeted by the famous inscription on the Main Building, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

These are the words of Jesus, John 8:31-32 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly

my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Much hinges on what Jesus meant when he used the word truth. This web site's writer comments that truth means reality, and what Jesus is

saying is that those of his disciples who abide in him are set free from unreality, specifically the unreal ways that people think

they can get to Heaven, or follow God.

These unreal ways are numerous in Western culture because the Enlightenment in the 17th century (the 1600s) got people used to the idea that

people should be at liberty to decide for themselves what is real and what is good. One outcome of this way of thinking is the conflicting ideas in our politics.

Another outcome was the anarchy of the French Revolution.

Another outcome, in the last 40 years, goes like this: If I am mad at the world, I can blame my problems on the world, and I can take out my aggressions by

shooting up my school. This is no flippant statement; if you think through school shootings and wars and other bad things people do to each other, what I am suggesting is rational. The best way

to live is to love people, and the definition of loving people is found in the Bible. Since the Bible is a long document and has multiple purposes, it takes some persistence and study to find what the Bible

says about loving people. When you study the Bible enough, you find that it has a consistent, rational message, it is not a hodge podge of ideas thrown together. You also find that other religious

documents are misleading, when they conflict with the Bible. If you think this is a bigoted statement, just read about all the people who were atheists for half their lives, then they trusted Jesus

and it changed their lives.

Most people do not know or care that U.T. drew on Jesus' words and that Jesus wanted people to be his disciples.

They think U.T. has always gone along with people being free, or autonomous. Reference: In 1967 was the

Land O'Lakes Conference, during which U.S. Catholic universities declared their autonimity, breaking away from control by Catholic authorities.

Looking at the blog http://www.hornfans.com/threads/the-truth-shall-set-you-free.34903/, one person says

Though borrowed from Christian writings, [the statement on the U.T. building] is manifestly an academic proclamation, i.e. secular.

I have always read it as the pursuit of true knowledge will free one from the servitude of ignorance and falsehood.

In this sense, it is for me positively anti-religious. Of course those who put it there did not have that in mind.

They were bible totin' folk, no doubt.

Another blogger: the foundations of Harvard are so far from where [Harvard] is today. Just shows how things change

from the beginning...During its early years, the College offered a classic academic course...consistent with the prevailing

Puritan philosophy of the first colonists in New England...In a directive to its students, it laid out the purpose of all

education: "...the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus, which is eternal life. And therefore

to lay Christ at the bottom as the only foundation of all sound learning and knowledge."

Estes model rockets

Homemade power supply above is for Gavin and Jacob. It is zero to 15 VDC, set by the control on the front. The DC comes out the right side.

A motor is connected in this photo. The supply is current limted to 1.26A max. When it current limits, the speaker beeps to let you

know it is overcurrented. There is a generous heat sink inside. This supply is built up from an inkjet printer supply of 19V. The

supply is 2-wire powered from AC so the output floats. (It could be used for negative power.)

The regulation circuit has no feedback and thus no oscillation tendency; it is merely a potentiometer with two emitter followers.

The current regulation is a PNP current limiter with a .267ohm sense resistor.

For home school and Wednesday Tech and Truth, I have been taking my 1997 power supply with the same beeping to indicate current

limiting. This supply is adjustable and so much smaller.