Exploring Acceleration with an Android

Students conduct an experiment to study the acceleration of a mobile Android device. During the experiment, they run an application created with MIT's App Inventor that monitors linear acceleration in one-dimension. Students use an acceleration vs. time equation to construct an approximate velocity vs. time graph. Students will understand the relationship between the object's mass and acceleration and how that relates to the force applied to the object, which is Newton's second law of motion.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Brian Sandall, Scott Burns

Hidden in Plain Sight

Steganography is the science and art of hiding messages in plain sight so only the sender and intended recipient know the existence of a message. Steganography can be characterized as security through obscurity. Through this lesson, students experience a portion of the engineering design process as they research steganography and steganographic methods; identify problems, criteria and constraints; brainstorm possible solutions; and generate ideas. These are the critical first steps in the engineering design process, often overlooked by students who want to get to the "doing" phases—designing, building and testing. In computer science, a thorough design phase makes program implementation much easier and more effective. Students obtain practice with a portion of the design process that may be less exciting, but is just as important as the other steps in the process.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Author: Derek Babb

Android Acceleration Application

In the first of two sequential lessons, students create mobile apps that collect data from an Android device's accelerometer and then store that data to a database. This lesson provides practice with MIT's App Inventor software and culminates with students writing their own apps for measuring acceleration. In the second lesson, students are given an app for an Android device, which measures acceleration. They investigate acceleration by collecting acceleration vs. time data using the accelerometer of a sliding Android device. Then they use the data to create velocity vs. time graphs and approximate the maximum velocity of the device.

Material Type: Full Course, Unit of Study

Authors: Brian Sandall, Scott Burns

Make a Shoebox Arcade Controller

What is inside a video game controller? Students learn about simple circuits and switches as they build arcade controllers using a cardboard box and a MaKey MaKey—an electronic tool and toy that enables users to connect everyday objects to computer programs. Each group uses a joystick and two big push button arcade buttons to make the controller. They follow provided schematics to wire, test and use their controllers—exploring the functionality of the controllers by playing simple computer games like Tetris and Pac-Man. Many instructional photos, a cutting diagram and a wiring schematic are included.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Angela Sheehan, Morgan Ulrich

Getting it Right!

In this lesson, students will investigate error. As shown in earlier activities from navigation lessons 1 through 3, without an understanding of how errors can affect your position, you cannot navigate well. Introducing accuracy and precision will develop these concepts further. Also, students will learn how computers can help in navigation. Often, the calculations needed to navigate accurately are time consuming and complex. By using the power of computers to do calculations and repetitive tasks, one can quickly see how changing parameters likes angles and distances and introducing errors will affect their overall result.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Authors: Janet Yowell, Jeff White, Malinda Schaefer Zarske, Matt Lippis, Penny Axelrad

Automatic Floor Cleaner Computer Program Challenge

Students learn more about assistive devices, specifically biomedical engineering applied to computer engineering concepts, with an engineering challenge to create an automatic floor cleaner computer program. Following the steps of the design process, they design computer programs and test them by programming a simulated robot vacuum cleaner (a LEGO® robot) to move in designated patterns. Successful programs meet all the design requirements.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Jared R. Quinn, Kristen Billiar, Terri Camesano

Our Bodies Have Computers and Sensors

Students learn about the human body's system components, specifically its sensory systems, nervous system and brain, while comparing them to robot system components, such as sensors and computers. The unit's life sciences-to-engineering comparison is accomplished through three lessons and five activities. The important framework of "stimulus-sensor-coordinator-effector-response" is introduced to show how it improves our understanding the cause-effect relationships of both systems. This framework reinforces the theme of the human body as a system from the perspective of an engineer. This unit is the second of a series, intended to follow the Humans Are Like Robots unit.

Material Type: Full Course, Unit of Study

Authors: Charlie Franklin, Marianne Catanho, Sachin Nair, Satish Nair

Here Comes the Hurricane! Saving Lives through Logical Reasoning and Computer Science

Students use a hurricane tracking map to measure the distance from a specific latitude and longitude location of the eye of a hurricane to a city. Then they use the map's scale factor to convert the distance to miles. They also apply the distance formula by creating an x-y coordinate plane on the map. Students are challenged to analyze what data might be used by computer science engineers to write code that generates hurricane tracking models. Then students analyze a MATLAB® computer code that uses the distance formula repetitively to generate a table of data that tracks a hurricane at specific time intervals. Students come to realize that using a computer program to generate the calculations (instead of by hand) is very advantageous for a dynamic situation like tracking storm movements. Their inspection of some MATLAB code helps them understand how it communicates what to do using mathematical formulas, logical instructions and repeated tasks. They also conclude that the example program is too simplistic to really be a useful tool; useful computer model tools must necessarily be much more complex.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Armando Vital, Fritz Claydon, Justin Chang, K. B. Nakshatrala, Rodrigues, Stuart Long

F-LE Moore's Law and Computers

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important aspects of the task and its potential use.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

DAVID BRUMLEY: COMPUTER SCIENTIST AND CYBERSECURITY ENTREPRENEUR

Kids InfoBits article from Muse by Peg Lopata.

Material Type: Reading

Author: Peg Lopata

Digital Mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Geographic information systems (GIS), once used predominantly by experts in cartography and computer programming, have become pervasive in everyday business and consumer use. This unit explores GIS in general as a technology about which much more can be learned, and it also explores applications of that technology. Students experience GIS technology through the use of Google Earth on the environmental topic of plastics in the ocean in an area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The use of this topic in GIS makes the unit multidisciplinary, incorporating the physics of ocean currents, the chemistry associated with pollutant degradation and chemical sorption to organic-rich plastics, and ecological impact to aquatic biota.

Material Type: Full Course, Unit of Study

Authors: Andrey Koptelov, Nathan Howell

Twenty-First Century Informational Literacy: Integrating Research Techniques and Technology

Students develop their reading, writing, research, and technology skills using graphic novels. As a final activity, students create their own graphic novels using comic software.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study

To Regroup or Not To Regroup

This task presents an incomplete problem and asks students to choose numbers to subtract (subtrahends) so that the resulting problem requires different types of regrouping. This way students have to recognize the pattern and not just follow a memorized algorithm--in other words, they have to think about what happens in the subtraction process when we regroup. This task is appropriate to use after students have learned the standard US algorithm.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

An Unexpected Guest

In this video segment from Cyberchase, Harry must adjust his dinner budget after his cousin, Harry, unexpectedly decides to join him on his date

Material Type: Lecture

Authors: U.S. Department of Education, WNET

GPS Receiver Basics

Students familiarize themselves — through trial and error — with the basics of GPS receiver operation. They view a receiver's satellite visibility screen as they walk in various directions and monitor their progress on the receiver's map. Students may enter waypoints and use the GPS information to guide them back to specific locations.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Janet Yowell, Malinda Schaefer Zarske, Matt Lundberg, Penny Axelrad