Though I haven’t been into electrical engineering for as long as I’ve been messing around with programming and computer science, I still deeply love the subject.

Having been a tinkerer from a young age, I would always take stuff apart in order to peek at what was inside. Before I was ten years old I had already taken apart everything from remote controls, CD Drives, and RC cars, just to poke at the internal components, and attempt to build something new from them.

My first real foray into electric engineering was only two years ago, actually. My father bought me a simple Arduino kit for Christmas, and I was immediately hooked. I went from a single blinking LED to an RFID, keycard activated door lock in only a week. I would stay up all night trying to mash together the components the kit came with in interesting ways. Then, exhausted, I would spend my bus rides to and from school reading Arduino-C documentation and pin-out diagrams for the components I hadn’t yet learned about.

The unique thing about electrical engineering, to me, is just how physical it is. Conjuring up computer programs from scratch was already mind-boggling to me, but being able to actually see and physically interact with my creations added a whole new level to that amazement.

I first was amazed by this level of interactivity and practicality, by watching the TV show, The Colony. The Colony featured a group of many people, placed into a faux-apocalyptic scenario. No running water, no electricity, and actors sent to raid and loot their compound. My favorite person on this show was John Cohn, an IBM fellow, and electrical engineer. He would mash together scrap electrical components to build insane contraptions, such as an electronic water purifier, or spark gap radio transmitter. Computer programs are cool, but they aren’t anything when compared to a giant solar-powered tricycle being driven by frizzy-haired madman.