Fascinating!
Same here. As a child I was baffled by the color television Great Grandma owned. My Grandparents had only a black and white and my parents had no TV at all. I got yelled at for getting up close trying to figure out how it worked and this fascination stayed with me throughout my life as TV technology progressed. OLED TV? Damn! Can it get better? I've taken apart tube TV's, plasma and LED TVs just to see the technology. It's amazing the sort of stuff people will drop off on the curb for free.
Curiosity is considered a bad thing today. You don't want to be deconstructing too much and explaining/exposing things today. I seem to exhibit this quirk of needing to understand how things work. I used to primarily do this with mechanical things, then electronics, then software. I then discovered I could deconstruct abstract concepts like finance and discovered it was nothing but a huge scam and it attracted mostly criminals. Next was education itself and now this. What I find is, explaining what is going in the world causes cognitive dissonance and I get into trouble by many people for it.
Yea, if you like figuring out how stuff works, you don't have to look too hard, there's plenty of interesting stuff all around us. Good luck!
I'm no genius but I am curious. As a kid I started taking apart things just to see how it works and try to figure it out. AVE on youtube is a genius at taking apart stuff and explaining the pros and cons of many power tools. There's other guys that do electronics and expose some cheap Chinese electronics scams.
A couple years ago I built a wooden sculpture from an interesting tree and wanted to install a light so I had to purchase a 12 volt LED power source. All I could buy at Lowe's was a small Chinese power supply that turned out to be absolute junk. Even the instructions couldn't be used and it came with no diagram in the packaging. As well, the power source couldn't be opened as it had been embedded in resin. No way in to figure it out. I returned it to Lowe's and advised them to stop marketing it as it could hurt someone. A week later when I checked back the junk was still on display. I did however find a small supply store in town that had dozens of various power sources for me to choose from. These were legitimate power sources with diagrams and instructions plus they had LED bulbs I could use in my housing for my light. In the end, it turned out great and I sold my sculpture for $600.00. My next sculpture is all finished and waiting for the light installation.
Originally when I started taking apart electronics a couple years ago it was for magnets in microwaves. I kind of cringe when I think of all the other components I simply tossed in the trash but I learned quite a bit about microwaves and how they work. TV's I took apart for the gold plated fingers and wiring. I'm looking forward now to maybe when someone drops an old OLED display on a sidewalk for me to snag. That will be fun.
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