When my children were little, their maternal grandfather, an engineer, could not resist taking their new toys apart on Christmas Day to see how they worked. While the children resisted this endeavour then, some of it apparently rubbed off on them, as they are prone, as young adults, to "mess" with any new item: flipping switches, turning knobs, removing hatch covers and generally toying around with the novel object. My son and heir coined a neologism to describe this behaviour; he says he is "tinkersome" ... and so he is.