The characters:
PROFESSOR VENTURA - He is an elderly who teaches mechatronics, electronics and physics at the Technical School of Electronics in Lemon city. With great interest in technology and science he is always experimenting with circuits and strange devices. He spends most of his time in the lab, along with his students doing interesting experiments or trying to solve the problems afflicting the city or involuntarily creating them. Professor Ventura is a true "maker" DIY fan, Do It Yourself building skillfully the strangest electronic devices.
BART AND BERT - They are two seniors at the technical school who love electronic technology and all that is scientific, they are the professor's fans and help him at every opportunity. Bart is the most active and smart while Clarke is somewhat limited by his weight that is above average, slower in physical activities as well as thinking. The dialogues that show the differences between the two of them make it easy to understand the explanations of scientific and technological principles of "artifacts" involved in the adventures.
PROFESSOR THEODORE CRICK - He is the principal of the technical school and tolerates the crazy experiments of Prof. Ventura, supporting the old master who in fact when does something wrong is not intentionally. He knows nothing about electronics.
TUBALD WEATHERCOCK - He is the main victim of Professor Ventura’s experiments, always getting into funny situations, but in totally unintended and unexpected ways. Tubald is the town barber and also a musician in a band. He plays tuba and is considered to have the most "powerful" lungs of the region (or of the bands of those "bands", if you like). He is married to Mrs. Ginevra Weathercock and lives in Newville.
SATURN SPENDTHRIFT - Is the mayor of the town, also called "preboste" (*) title given by a political enemy. The derivatives of the nickname, sounding so as to have a double meaning, take the mayor to situations narrated which become pathetic, critical and even funny. The mayor's presence allows the author criticize the politics in a smooth way in many of the stories.
(*) In Spanish and Portuguese this title has a derogatory meaning.
Other minor characters but permanent:
Maestro Ronald - The Conductor of the band and the town pharmacist
Dr. John Cyrus - The town dentist
Chief Marins - The local police chief who is a friend of Prof. Ventura
Cop Oliver - Local police officer
Christopher Openedeye - Night watchman
THE PLACE:
The Lemon city, named after the founder Lemonion Pluckwood, an explorer who wanted to conquer the West, stumbled on a "cursed" lemon tree and stayed there long enough to found a small village which soon turned into a town.
The economy, of course, is based on endless plantations of lemon trees and the juice factory, "Lemonmill”.
The square is between the two main streets, one which concentrates the stores and ends at the technical school, its backyard looks at the river, and the other connects the town with the highway, becoming a bridge over the river.
The river makes a turn that surrounds the town and it is quite wide and deep. There is a street that goes up and down a hill in curves ending at Newville, the only neighborhood that is away from most of the town. At the top of the hill we have an old abandoned mansion and a cemetery which will be the scenarios of some interesting adventures.
All the adventures always happen in these scenarios with these characters as the center, as well as others that may come out with eventual appearances.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
An important point to note is that all the adventures seek teaching a bit of technology, especially electronics, mechatronics and also engineering and mathematics as part of the STEM according the new education guidelines, in a very gentle way. The devices and circuits involved are always analyzed by Professor Ventura that explains them to Bart and Clarke. Due to this fact, even if it is not directly linked to the people that are not from the technical area, it makes the work very didactic. It is easy to learn a lot of technology, computer science, electronics and also mathematics and their basics in a fun way.
The Professor, as a true maker, uses advanced resources and basic things from the use of old valves to microcontrollers, drones, mobile phones, etc.
The first stories of Prof. Ventura were published on “Eletrônica Total”, an electronic magazine, and will be available on this page of our website, so that the readers to enjoy them. The first to be published will be Dental Interface. The illustration done long ago for Prof. Ventura, Bart and Clarke is shown below. The professor and his students are changing "face" and soon their new looks are more modern, will be shown to the readers.
This story of Professor Ventura, Bart and Clarke was the first to be published on Total 67 Electronic magazine - April 1994 and it was based on real facts as noted at the end of this text.
For this new publication on the internet, there were made some changes in the text, aiming at a technological upgrade and to be according the STEM guidelines, but the essence of the extraordinary phenomenon remained.
