As part of iFixit’s Community Survey, we collected some amazing stories about how you use, break, and fix your stuff. The stories were too good not to share. So, we started a series of blog posts—The Amazing Break—to document your collective awesomeness.

Of course, Memorial Day is just around the corner. To mark the day, we’ve compiled all the best stories we got from the servicemen, servicewomen, and veterans in our community.

Thanks for doing what you do, fellows.

Major Pain

“I work communications in the military, I had a buddy who had an iPhone that he put on top of a Humvee. Then the truck pulled off, the phone fell off the truck and was ran over by another one. The phone was found and returned to the owner. It was still functional but needed new glass, a screen, and a home button.”

Rollover Minutes

“My 2008 MacBook Pro was with me in a vehicle rollover in Iraq and I watched as it slowly bounced off every metal surface in the vehicle. Two days later, it caught a bullet too, though I think that was overkill. (Interesting fact: the bullet most likely came from a wedding party that was firing rounds in the air. The round came through the roof of my hut).”

Takes a lickin’, keeps on tickin’

“Titanium PowerBook shot by 7.62mm round in Takrit, Iraq before the US military secured the town during Gulf War 2. The round went through the door of a humvee, into the side of a Pelican case, and hit the edge of the display where it stopped. The laptop was still functional for years.”

Battle Hymn of the iPod

“During a military deployment I took apart and fixed a buddy’s iBook outside on a small table in the middle of the southern Afghanistan desert. I also rigged our Humvee’s com system so iPods could play through them.”

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

“Fixed a $6-mil military radar with parts out of a broken XBox in Iraq.”

Combat Veteran iPhone

“Arghandab, Afghanistan, 2009: I always carry my iPhone3G on me for various lame tasks: music, calculator, etc. Nothing sensitive. We get ambushed in a village and take RPG fire, real close proximity impact knocks the living shit out of me. I take minor shrapnel, a few scratches, my right sleeve shreds up to my shoulder, my kit (SOHPC) torn up, two mag pouches gone. After the firefight I’m going through my kit and I find my iPhone in a front accessory pouch—back and glass broken, looked unrecoverable. Didn’t expect to salvage it.

When we got home I gutted it, saved everything I could, even the tiny speaker. Over the years, my wife’s iPhone shit the bed. I’ve been able to keep it alive till now using the spare parts. Thanks, Steve Jobs, and thank you, iFixit! We can do it. The combat veteran iPhone continues to serve our country, even in afterlife.”

Yesterday, TechNews Daily ran an article insisting “you don’t need Congress to unlock your phone.” Their reasoning: “You can unlock your phone today, illegally, and feel confident you won’t end up in jail.”

It’s true. If you have the audacity to unlock your phone, the unlocking cops won’t drag you and your phone off to jail. TechNews is right. In all likelihood, nothing will happen. At least, not to you.

But the engineers and software developers who write the unlocking programs that you download can face some pretty serious ramifications: up to 5 years in jail and $500,000 in fines. Just the threat of prosecution has historically been enough to persuade developers to shutter their sites and kill the program.

It happened to Sina Khanifar. Back when he was a college student, he wrote and sold unlocking software. In 2005, he received a cease and desist letter from Motorola informing him that he was in breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—a massive copyright law written in 1998. “At the time, I was an undergraduate student studying Physics. The prospect of 5 years or more in prison was devastating,” he writes of the experience.

Still, Sina didn’t cave to Motorola’s demands. He fought them. Now, he’s the most vocal DMCA-reform activist on the web.

But even if you’re not interested in unlocking, there’s a better reason to support reform. The DMCA is a hugely complicated law, and it has had a lot of really bad unanticipated consequences. The anti-circumvention provision in the DMCA that makes unlocking illegal also makes a slew of other things illegal: it has hindered academic researchers, made it difficult to repair and modify hardware, and even hampered voice-to-text programs that help the blind read ebooks.

So sure, you won’t be arrested for unlocking your phone—but cell phone unlocking is a symptom of a much larger problem. The anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA is poorly written; it doesn’t reflect how we use technology today. And the law has been manipulated by corporations to limit your right to do what you need with the things that you own.

Explore the helpful primer above for more reasons why fixing the DMCA is necessary, then go to FixtheDMCA.org and demand Congress take action.

Around here, we’re big fans of William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s 2002 book Cradle to Cradle. McDonough (an architect) and Braungart (a chemist) completely re-imagine the manufacturing process—from design to end-of-life.

The book espouses smart design, without the use of materials that are harmful to environment or to living creatures.  After that, re-manufacturing, recycling, and re-using continually reintroduce materials back into the resource stream.

Here’s the best part: when you read it, you get the feeling that McDonough and Braungart are onto something. That this crazy idea could actually work.

And we’re not the only ones who think so; Cradle to Cradle is up there with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in terms of influence. Concepts from Cradle to Cradle have found their way into think tanks, like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and into EU government policy.

Naturally, when Braungart and McDonough published a follow-up to Cradle to Cradle, we couldn’t wait to get our hands on it. The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainbility—Designing for Abundance expands on ideas introduced in the first book. Braungart and McDonough even address electronics manufacturing—something we are particularly interested in.

Here’s a much-abridged version of what they had to say on the topic:

[R]are-earth and heavy metals are truly precious because they allow us to have the needed and valued goods, such as lifesaving devices, renewable power, computers, cars, and so on.

But if people keep designing for one material use and not reuse, we ‘use up’ clean forms of the technical nutrients needed to make the products for the future. This means we will all worry about ‘limits to growth’ because we feel we are running out of resources. Because of suboptimal design of virtually all current appliances from a material-reuse perspective, there’s a chance that the technical nutrients used to make them are being used up. The same goes for computers and cars and lawn mowers.

[…]Start with good intentions right from the beginning of the design process. Optimizing materials means choosing the fabrics or metals or polymers that begin with goodness in mind.

[…]So how could we change our actions to support the diverse desires of people now and in future generations? We don’t have to suppress our desire for newness, for abundance.

[…]We can create a system for the natural and effective proliferation of computers, of sneakers, of carpet…of anything we want or need.

Could this really be possible? Design for repair and disassembly would go a long way, but end-of-life is just one side of a product’s environmental footprint. Will it ever be possible to manufacture computers without materials that ravage the earth? Without toxic elements?

We certainly hope so. What do you think?

We firmly believe that it’s always best to use the right tool for the job. But, sometimes, time is really of the essence. When you’ve just dropped your iPhone in a glass of Sprite or your motherboard is on fire, you probably don’t have time to wait for a box of shiny new tools to arrive in the mail.

In these cases, you may need to resort to some improvisation. Here are a few tricks we’ve collected from our own experiences and those of our users:

Anything plastic for soft prying tools

Working at iFixit, I have access to pretty much every prying tool imaginable. Before that, though, I scratched up some of my repair victims patients pretty spectacularly by prying with the wrong tool.

As much as we’d love to see more screws in this world, lots of devices out there are sealed with adhesive or clips. That means they require forceful wedging and prying as their standard mode of entry. In these instances plastic opening tools are best. But if you’re in a jam and need to improvise, resist the overwhelming urge to poke at your device mercilessly with a flathead screwdriver.

Instead, grab something plastic. We love guitar picks and plastic cards (used-up gift cards and expired credit cards work great). In a pickle, you can even make use of a disposable plastic spoon or knife.

Paperclip for a SIM card eject tool

This one is a no-brainer: GSM/LTE devices made by Apple and many other manufacturers have a removable SIM card, which can only be accessed by shoving a paperclip-sized piece of wire into a hole. These devices come with a fancy custom-manufactured eject tool that we estimate most users lose within the first 27 minutes of device ownership. Fear not: a slightly straightened out paperclip will serve just as well to pop out your SIM.

Nail clippers as wire cutters

For those MacGyver-esque moments when you’ve got to cut the red wire but forgot your snips at home, nail clippers are surprisingly effective for the job. This trick might be a little risky to your clips, so stick to thin gauges. Still, nail clippers are especially great for when you need a flush cut, like trimming component leads after through-hole soldering.

Plier-and-rubber band hemostats

One of the more underutilized tools, hemostats are a sort of pliers that lock shut with a springy clamping force. They’re designed for clamping blood vessels during surgery. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use them to hold onto wires to solder or keep cables under control. In fact, before I even knew what hemostats were, I made my own with needle-nose pliers and a rubber band.

Melted pen for a one-time-use screwdriver

So, what do you do when you’ve dropped your iPhone in a tasty beverage and don’t have ready-access to that proprietary Pentalobe screwdriver? While we haven’t actually confirmed this hack (we ruined a couple of pen caps trying), one of our survey-respondents managed to make a home-brew, tri-wing screwdriver to open a game console by melting a plastic pen. Here’s the MacGyver-ific story:

I managed to fix a broken Nintendo DS without the appropriate screwdriver. I wasn’t in a position to buy the appropriate screw drivers, as the shipping costs to Switzerland were three times the price of the actual tool. Somehow, with information from iFixit and little bit of Googling, I managed to melt a pen made out of plastic to fit the screw and open up the device.

What are some of your favorite tool hacks for emergency doohickey repair? Let us know in the comments!

We’re all about getting the knowledge and tools for repair into the hands of as many people as possible. So when Timothy Warner asked us to collaborate on his upcoming book about fixing and maintaining iDevices, we jumped on board and helped out.

The book—The Unauthorized Guide to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Repair: A DIY Guide to Extending the Life of Your iDevices!—was just published and is now available for purchase in all the usual places.

A combination of Warner’s experience as an Apple Certified Repair Technician and loads of full-color photos, The Unauthorized Guide is an awesome resource for amateur and professional fixers alike. It’s filled with step-by-step repair instructions for nearly every iDevice, info on recovering from water damage, and tips for sourcing, repairing, and reselling broken iDevices.

We’ve thoroughly reviewed the book for technical accuracy, and are proud to give it our full approval and backing.

Photo: Imochard / Flickr

A funny thing happened on the way to Congress yesterday. For once, lawmakers introduced a common-sense bill — the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013.

If passed, the bill would give Americans freedom to do what they need — unlock, repair, maintain, modify — with the devices they own, whether cellphone or car. “Own” being the operative word, because, as I’ve argued here before, it’s no longer obvious who owns our stuff when we live in an age where physical objects are also digital and require access to information (such as service manuals).

With such a common-sense bill, you might assume that Congress will make a rational decision to guarantee our rights — especially when introduced by a bipartisan coalition of representatives: Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and Jared Polis (D-CO).

But don’t kid yourself: this is an uphill battle.

Technology advocates don’t have a great record of legislative wins compared to the deep-pocketed carriers and content lobbyists who are masters of playing the long game. The most likely course of action is a stopgap solution — like a Leahy bill that scores political points but fails to solve anything — so it’s important that we voice our support, now.

This isn’t the first bill in Congress to tackle the problem of cell phone unlocking. Unlocking — a tweak that allows consumers to modify the software on their devices and move cell phones to different carriers — is a common resort for international travelers, including military servicemen, who unlock devices to avoid exorbitant roaming fees while abroad. The practice was deemed illegal by The Librarian of Congress and banned early this year.

However, once the White House threw its support behind legalization efforts, no less than three other bills have been introduced in the Senate. All of them have been lackluster, since not one made any meaningful reforms to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a massive copyright protection law passed in 1998 whose provisions made cellphone unlocking illegal in the first place.

The Unlocking Technology Act, however, is not a band-aid: It’s a solution. It’s the first serious effort by Congress to make a permanent change on the unlocking front. And, instead of eschewing the problems with copyright as the Leahy bill does, it meets them head on.

Here’s how this bill is different from the others. It would allow all consumers to circumvent the digital locks on their mobile devices. Anyone could access and modify software on their devices, in the same way they already modify and repair hardware.

Importantly, it would also protect the engineers and entrepreneurs who create tools that allow consumers to unlock their phones. This is a particularly huge distinction and major departure from other bills. Most people don’t write their own software. If you need to unlock your phone, odds are you’d go online and download a software program that does it for you.

Without the changes in the current bill, the developers who made that software face harsh penalties — up to 5 years in jail and a $500,000 fine for distributing unlocking software. “There is little point in making a technology lawful for person[al] use but keeping it illegal to develop,” writes Derek Khanna, a vocal proponent of cell phone unlocking and copyright reform. He also points out that the new bill recognizes such “pro-free market technology” as “pro-innovation.” Makes perfect business sense.

In fact, the careful wording of the proposed law makes sense for stakeholders on both sides of the debate. It doesn’t just protect object owners — it protects copyright holders from threats, too. The bill states that unlocking is only allowed “if the purpose of the circumvention is to use a work in a manner that is not an infringement of copyright.”

Violating copyright by bootlegging movies and music will remain illegal, as will bypassing digital locks for the purpose of copyright violation. The new law would guarantee digital rights for researchers, repair shops, and consumers while preserving the intellectual property rights of authors and musicians. Importantly, it would continue to guarantee artists’ rights to earn a living from their work.

In other words: Besides protecting copyright holders and legalizing jailbreaking and unlocking all mobile devices, the Unlocking Technology Act opens the door to wider, much-needed copyright reform.

Yet it’s precisely this “broader approach” that could also “create more opposition,” as Sherwin Sly of advocacy group Public Knowledge told me. He remains hopeful, as do I, but we can’t afford to forget that there are a lot of entrenched interests here.

Clearly, copyright is broken. The reason the DMCA prevents us from unlocking our phones in the first place “has nothing to do with the cellphone industry, and everything to do with poor lawmaking,” points out Sina Khanifar, the copyright activist who first thrust the unlocking controversy into the national spotlight. “The DMCA was meant to stop piracy, but because of vague language the law has been misappropriated to keep all manner of devices locked down, including cell phones.”

The side effects the DMCA include farmers who can’t main can’t maintain their equipment, independent mechanics who struggle to fix the latest cars, and even scientists who can’t install Linux on game consoles to build affordable supercomputer clusters for research purposes. Other unintended, stifling side effects include making the visually impaired petition every three years for the right to use screen reader technology for e-books: They live with the fear that their right to read could be arbitrarily taken away by the Librarian of Congress.

So the Unlocking Technology Act is exactly the sort of reform that the DMCA needs. But without public support, bills have a tendency to get lost in committee, voted down, or passed over for easier-to-pass, less rigorous legislation.

We can’t let that happen. It’s crucial that Congress recognize the significance of this act, but that will only be possible if the public is vocal in their support. The time to speak up is now.

This article was also published on Wired.

Almost 5,000 people gave us the details of their most harrowing repair moments. Of course, this is the iFixit community; we fix things. So, for every break story someone sent us, another person told us about an incredible repair he or she performed.

We enjoyed your repair trials, tribulations, and victories so much, we decided to preserve them for posterity in a series of blog posts. Here’s another installment of The Amazing Break:

Fire in the Hole

“Whilst trying to change the toilet seat in my new flat, I used WD40 to loose the bolts. That didn’t work so I heated the bolts with a match, at which point the WD40 ignited and my toilet caught fire.”

Scale It Down a Bit

“My son stood on the iPad and said, ‘Siri, give me my weight.’ And, you know, a screen replacement is not cheap.”

No One Does Good Deeds Anymore

“Electronic ignition on my 1980 Mustang died while traveling 60mph on Chicago’s Eisenhower Expressway. Got stuck in the fast lane with cars whizzing by. A nice man stopped behind me and offered to push my car with his to get it off the road. As we moved it off, a car nearly hit us. The man whipped out a .44 Magnum and threatened the offending driver. I thought I would end up on the 6pm news as another crime victim. After the car was off, he said, ‘No one does good deeds anymore,’ waved, and drove away.”

Free Wheelin’

“I was driving a rental car, stopped at a 4-way stop, and watched the passenger side front wheel continue through the intersection.”

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Break It Again

“I had a hard drive go out on me. I had tried everything I could think of to get it going again so it would be read by the PC. I then recalled my grandpa telling me 30+ years ago that if something doesn’t work right, drop it three times and that will fix it. I figured I had nothing to lose so I dropped the hard drive three times from about three inches above the ground. Sure enough, when I plugged the drive back in it worked. It hasn’t failed again to this day and it was dropped almost 2 years ago.”

Got an amazing break (or fix) story of your own? Tell us about them in the comments.

This Android-powered Ouya console is the first of its kind. It’s specifically designed to be open to professional and amateur game designers alike, with free software development tools included with every console. Sounds like it’s right up our alley.

Full disclosure: The folks at Ouya tout this to be “the first totally open video game console.” They have so much confidence in the Ouya, in fact, that they sent us a retail unit to take apart. Game on, folks.

The small cube (and its controller) came apart with little difficulty. Those with long-haired pets will appreciate that it takes about five minutes to pop open and clean out the heatsink and fan. As a result of its disassembility, the Ouya scored a stellar 9 out of 10 on the repairability scale.

Teardown highlights:

• The inside of the Ouya features a very clean and simple layout. The motherboard, I/O ports, and fan are tucked into the console as a single assembly.

• It’s rare that we see a design that intentionally adds weight. Unlike cell phones or tablets, which need to be light and mobile, the Ouya needs bulk to stand up to the cables on the back, and is fitted with five metal weights that add nearly two ounces of bottom-heavy staying power to the diminutive console.

• The fan is the only modular, easily-removed component in the box—which is fortunate, as it’s also the only moving component, subject to wear. The fan’s a standard, off-the-shelf part, so you can easily replace it if it kicks the bucket. Boouya.

• Ouya engineers chose to solder the heat sink in place on the motherboard, for improved mechanical strength over clips. They were were (rightfully) worried about such a small console being knocked around or dropped, and soldering the heat sink down proved a much tougher design, better at surviving drop tests.

• A lone IC, a Broadcom BCM20730 Bluetooth 3.0 transceiver is charged with running the entire controller. With an integrated ARM Cortex M3 processor, it’s capable of reading all of the button and joystick inputs and sending them off into the ether (or really, back to the Ouya console).

• Prominent ICs on the front and back of the motherboard:
• Two Samsung K4B4G1646B 4 Gb DD3 SDRAM modules (2 x 4 Gb for 1 GB total)
• SMSC LAN9500A Hi-Speed USB 2.0 to 10/100 Ethernet Controller
• Texas Instruments TPS659110 Integrated Power Management Unit
• AzureWave AW-NH660 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth 4.0 module, based on Broadcom BCM4330
• Nvidia T33-P-A3 Tegra 3 Multi-Core CPU
• Kingston KE4CN3K6A 8 GB eMMC

We’ve got more where that came from. Visit the full teardown for more Ouya action.

Just thought I’d take a look at the state of electronics recycling around the world to see how we’re doing.

According to the International Environmental Technology Center of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the volume of e-waste is increasing by 40 percent per year worldwide. They estimate that 80 percent of it is still going in to landfills and incinerators. According to UNEP, e-waste is the fastest-growing type of waste, particularly in some developing countries where the volume is expected to grow by up to 500 percent over the next decade.

Unfortunately, electronics recycling is a comparatively low priority in many countries. Most countries of the world (including the U.S.) don’t have a coherent national collection infrastructure. This is true for most of Asia where the problem is becoming critical. According to Park Young-Woo of the United Nations Environment Program, the Asia-Pacific region now produces more than half of global e-waste. He estimates that only 10 percent of it is recycled worldwide.

Europe

The great thing about Europe is that it has a comprehensive and formal regional strategy on electronics recycling. The not so great thing is that each of the 27 countries of the European Union has its own version of that strategy. The WEEE Directive is the set of laws that governs the proper collection and disposal of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) in the 27 countries of the European Union. It has been developing since 2002.

The WEEE directive currently sets a minimum collection target of 4 kg (8.8 pounds) per year per person for WEEE from households. The latest update of the law is expected to be formally approved in 2014. The overall aim is for the EU to recycle at least 85 percent of electrical and electronics waste equipment by 2019.

Germany and UK are so far the leading countries with the largest recycling volumes. The UK has also just launched the first set of standards in the world on electronics refurbishment called PAS 141. Companies accredited to the PAS’s 141 standards, assure that used electronics devices being shipped anywhere in the world are fully functional. Switzerland was the first country in the world to adopt an electronics recycling system in 1991. Things are actually going pretty well in Europe. The countries of Eastern Europe that have more recently joined the EU are largely on track to develop their WEEE Directive laws.

Asia

Asia is also a good news-bad news story. On the one hand, three countries have the highest electronics recycling rates in the world. On the other hand, the dominant countries of India and China are far behind.

• In Taiwan, the recycling rate for IT equipment and appliances combined is 82 percent, the highest in the world. They operate a network of around 500 collection points.
• South Korea also has a developed electronics recycling system that now recovers and properly processes over 75 percent of discarded electronics.
• Japan has a structured system based on their Law for the Recycling of Specified Kinds of Home Appliances and their Law for Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources. Their system recovers around 75 percent of e-waste. They are leaders in technologies to reclaim difficult to recover materials like rare earths.
• In India, 95 percent of obsolete electronics are recycled in the informal sector. They have some state laws in place, but are arguably the furthest away from having an electronics recycling system among large Asian countries. They are developing an industrial capacity, for instance, with companies like Trishyiraya Recycling in Southern India.
• The Guiyu region in southern China is the poster child of digital dumps and bad electronics recycling. Its well document practices of uncontrolled burning, and other informal recycling practices are a major source of groundwater pollution. China is the second largest producer of electronic waste in the world. China does have a national law called The Management Regulations for Recycling and Disposing of Consumer Electronics and Electronic Waste that bans e-waste and imports, and requires processors to be licensed. The country is developing formal recycling capacity like with the TES-AMM Corporation in Shanghai.

North America

Canada has electronics recycling systems in seven provinces, and also their national law called the Export and Import of Hazardous Waste and Hazardous Recyclable Material Regulations that regulates the export of e-waste to developing countries. It does have an industry standard for proper electronics recycling and processing, and a developed industry.

The U.S. has a patchwork of laws in half of the U.S. states. It does have some Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations around disposing of CRT monitors, but doesn’t have a national law or system for recycling electronics. It does have a very developed electronics recycling industry that largely adheres to two competing industrial standards, Responsible Recycling (R2) and E-Stewards. The U.S. collects and recycles about 27 percent of its electronics discards according to the U.S. EPA. We dispose of over 130 million cell phones every year, of which 11 percent are recycled. Each U.S. household now spends around $1,200 each year on new electronics gadgets, all of which will be disposed of in a few years time.

Africa

Africa is the poorest region in the world and there is comparatively little going on there in the way of dealing with e-waste, but there are actually some promising developments in Africa. The UN Basel Convention sponsored the Pan-African Forum on E-Waste in Nairobi last March to get things rolling. The e-Waste Association of South Africa (eWASA) is building a network of e-waste recyclers and refurbishers in the country. There are no legal structures for electronics recycling in Africa yet. Also the UN conducted some research on used computer and electronics management in Africa. Their studies find that about 85 percent of surplus electronics imports are reused, not discarded. Africa’s technology lifecycle for displays is two to three times the productive use cycle in richer nations. African nations lead the world in electronics reuse.

Another UN study finds that domestic consumption is the main contributor to Africa’s growing e-waste problem. About half of all people in Africa own mobile phones. This is similar to what is happening in Asia. Africa now has more mobile phone users than either the U.S. or E.U. or Latin America. It is second only to Asia. It has had 30 percent growth in mobile adoption over the last 10 years. Africa has a 1 percent recycling rate for mobile phones.

Latin America

Five countries in Latin America now have e-waste laws or rules: Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, and Mexico. Brazil is particularly active with its Brazilian Association of Electric and Electronic Recycling Companies and its emerging comprehensive e-scrap policy with a target of 17 percent by 2018.

One of my great heroes, Uca Silva, of the SUR Corporación de Estudios Sociales y Educación in Chile, has long been spearheading activities to develop country specific laws and also a regional strategy like the Guidelines for the Management of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) in Latin America. This lays out a framework for developing a harmonized regional strategy for e-waste management like they have in Europe.

Latin America is no different than the developing countries of Asia and Africa in its adoption of mobile phones and PCs. It now has a quarter billion Internet users and 450 million mobile phone users. At 16 percent growth, Latin America is the fastest growing region in the world in adding Internet users. I don’t know what Uca is going to do to deal with the zillions of electronics devices heading toward disposal in Latin America, but I’m glad people like her are working on the problem.

This guest post was written by Jim Lynch, Director of Computer Recycling & Reuse at TechSoup.

Yellowed kitchen appliances, dust-streaked radios, unresponsive DVD players: the table was strewn with stuff that even a local thrift store’s discounts couldn’t make enticing. Most of the electronics were broken and all of them had outlived their usefulness. But you wouldn’t have known it by the number of children—screwdrivers in hand—who crowded the table that day just to get a look inside of them.

The demographic at the last USA Science and Engineering Festival was a little different from the one I usually cater to at iFixit—a free online repair manual for everything from cracked iPhones to DIY oil changes. My company’s mission is to teach as many people as possible how to fix the stuff they own—kids included.

And kids were just as eager to learn as we were to teach them. The festival warehouse was crowded and noisy, but once they pried up the hood of a device, the world faded to mute as pint-sized tech magellans explored circuit boards and examined old motors. One middle-schooler spent two hours working on an old VCR. Time well spent, because he got to watch the old relic whir back to life—a mixture of surprise and elation on his face.

Kids are born tinkerers. They have the natural inquisitiveness of engineers. All they need is someone to put an iPod in one hand, a screwdriver in the other, and ask, “Do you want to take this apart?” And when I ask that question, their eyes go wide with astonishment. After all, their parents have been telling them not to take things apart their entire lives.

As adults, we are just as obsessed with toys as our kids are—of course, ours are more expensive. And the places we keep them tend to turn into adult-only zones: the glass-paneled entertainment center, the cloistered iPhone pocket of a handbag, the high-tech man cave. All of it is kept out of reach.

Once you give them permission to play, everything changes. Children are curious. They want to know what makes that mysterious machine tick. Taking apart a piece of hardware answers the eternal “how?” that is always on a child’s lips. For them, it’s an opportunity to find out how the world works.

I’ve even found that kids are more interested in learning engineering than adults. Give kids something to take apart and their faces light up with excitement. Give adults the same device, and intimidation clouds their faces. That fear comes from a lifetime of feeling like electronics are beyond our ken, a feeling ingrained by a society that constantly reminds us ending is better than mending.

That’s why it’s so crucial that we get to boys and (especially) girls early—before the sense that we can’t-do overwhelms the belief that we can.

When that happens, we go through life never the wiser as to what’s inside those inscrutable black boxes. And as long as they work, we don’t really care. The problem: it’s pushing a generation of students away from critical industries.

In 2010, less than 5 percent of the American workforce was in science and engineering—and then only 25 percent of them women. Maybe that’s partly because so many people are mystified, baffled, even frightened by technology.

We need to stop treating electronics as an “adult zone.” Properly supervised, most electronic repairs are far less dangerous than, say, football.

And I bet it’s easier than you think. There’s nothing inherently more difficult about changing an iPod battery than putting together a Lego model. The tools are different and the parts are more varied, but the process is similar. So, take old cell phones, MP3 players, computers out of your drawers, basements, garages. If they’re broken, figure out how to fix them—then use them or give them away.

Kids take to repair really quickly. Every time we host a fix-it clinic, kids who have no prior repair experience are able to fix their parents’ electronics. When we went to Egypt and Kenya to film our repair documentary, Fixers, we saw school children in Nairobi who had learned electronics repair as part of the curriculum. We hear regularly from young teenagers who used iFixit guides and tools to start small repair businesses—some of those kids are highly successful.

Taking complex machines apart teaches engineering. That’s why we should build opportunities to explore electronics into curriculum. That’s why parents should help their kids take stuff apart. So get a good screwdriver and rescue some moldering electronics from your garage. If you give your kids permission to play, learning science and engineering will look like fun.

This story also ran with Good.is.