Robotics update mid October

Yesterday was  a great example of our outreach.  Several of our students led a LEGO Mindstorm programming workshop for the Educational Forum at BUA.  There were over 30 middle school students who attended the workshops.

The students have been busy building VEX and FTC robots, and preparing for our Lego League Tournament.  As you prepare for the holiday season, if you need to buy a last minute Halloween costume, feel free to shop at Costume Supercenter, one of our sponsors.  You can link to them through our sponsors web-site.  http://www.bu.edu/bufirst/2565-2/sponsors/

We have a great set of undergraduate mentors this year including Emily, Kanav, Thomas, Armann, Thomas, and Jenny!

On Saturday, December 1st we will be hosting a LEGO League Tournament in the Sargent Gym.   I expect that most of our students will be involved in the running of this event.  Our students will be referees, judges, mentors, and tech support.  They will be busy!  I also am looking for parents to volunteer to help out with this event.  If you happen to be in a career related to Seniors (which is the theme this year), we would love to have you as a judge! We are also looking for companies related to Seniors to be sponsors for this event.

VEX:  I hope to compete in 2-3 VEX tournaments this fall.  We will have two VEX squads (with a maximum of 10 students) registered.  Our first match will be at Trinity High School in Manchester, NH on Saturday November 3rd.  We will not be providing transportation, so if you can help out with carpooling that would be great (and provide a lift for our undergraduate coaches).  Students will be selected soon.

FTC:  I hope will be attending an FTC scrimmage in Lexington in mid-November.  Details coming.

The FRC kickoff is the Saturday before BUA classes resume in January (Jan 5th).  We will also be hosting tournaments on Jan 4th and Jan 6th.
We are registered for the Boston FRC Regional March 21-23.

All students this year are expected to be involved in fund-raising and community service.  Fund-raising can take the form of finding sponsors, selling LED Light Bulbs, or selling Hex-Bugs, or helping to run concessions at the tournaments.  Community service might take the form of helping out at demonstrations, our tournaments we host, building LEGOs for the tournaments, working at the camps, etc.

Please feel free to get in touch with me if you have questions.

Nobel Prize, Vectors and Newton’s Laws

So this week, they awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. David Wineland from U. Colorado received the prize for his work in Quantum Optics.   17 years ago when I was applying to grad school for Photonics programs, I was actually decided between Colorado, Arizona, and B.U.   That was just when Colorado was making a lot of its big optics discoveries.   No regrets.  Boston is more fun.

This week we have finished up Newton's Third Law.  After several probing questions about action-reaction, I posted the following question.

A robot pulls on a rope with a certain amount of tension T read by a scale.

Now two robots have a Tug-Of-War and pull on the rope from either side.  What is the reading on the scale.

a)   Zero

b)  Equal to the original Tension T

c)  Twice the original Tension T

This is a great question because the answer is not obvious.  The students then tested their ideas using the LEGO NXT robots.  Most houses used spring scales, but the ambitious Gryffindors went and connect Vernier Force Probes into NXT-Vernier adapters which allowed the robots to measure the tension in the string!

They wrote the above LabView code for this experiment.  Way cool!

 

Today the students measured the height of Marsh Chapel.  This was fun because there was so much variety in student methods.  Some students used trigonometry.  Some students used similar triangles.  Some students used image analysis.  Bravo for the students who helped each other out and worked together as a House to score lots of points.  Boo-hiss on those who could not cooperate.   They lost points.

But what surprised the students is how short March Chapel is.  There is an optical illusion.  Buildings are much taller than they seem.  Michael and Tom use a 45 degree angle to find the height of the chapel.  Which meant the chapel was only as tall as they were far away.  It wasn't as tall as they thought!

 

 

 

Lab Reports

So I just finished reading the first drafts of the introductions of the physics students lab reports.  After reading and giving feedback on almost 50 of these reports, my mind is numb.  A few of the students are naturals.  The rest, we have only four years to get them to the point where they can write an 8000, no we changed it, 6000, oops 4000 word Senior Thesis.   They will get there.  Once they learn how to use paragraphs, topic sentences, transitions, cohesive developing ideas....and maybe even proper grammar and speeling along the way.

A few links for students writing the lab reports:

How to generate a bibliography

The software the computers use to analyze data from motion sensors is Logger Pro.

The interface unit is a Vernier LabPro.

The ultrasonic motion sensors.

The Black Rails for the Carts

The Silver Rails for the Carts

The PASCO Dynamics Carts.

Black Bricks for Carts

The LEGO Carts actually have wheels from the PASCO Carts

The Image Analysis Software is from the CEEO.

Here is a low-cost piece of Video Analysis Software from Vernier

Finished Galileo and Started Newton

So today, the last group of students finished our experiments on Galileo.  The question we explored was the Law of Falling Bodies (objects that are falling continuously accelerate and the distance traveled depends on the square of the time) and whether or not the acceleration of a falling object depends on mass.  Some groups dropped objects, whereas others used ramps.  Some used ultrasonic motion sensors by Vernier.   Others made videos and used the Image Analysis software developed by Jessie Thorup, a recent graduate in mechanical engineering from Tufts.  The one interesting hiccup with the software is that it would download the data into a Google Docs.  But with the recent migration to Google Drive, she needs to update the software.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

It was a rather sad and pathetic Talk Like a Pirate Day at BUA this year.

The freshmen actually thought if they "talked" like a Pirate it would garner respect.

No, respect (and house points) takes effort.  If these freshmen had any chutzpa, this is what BUA would have looked like last week.

 

 

 

 

 

All I can say is this.  I had better get the heebie jeebies when I walk into my classroom on Wednesday, October 31st this year.  Or else I will not take anyone to the annual Physics Department Pumpkin Drop.

 

Next up

I was going to dive into vectors next, but rumor has it I might be getting a touch table from Templeman Automation the first week of October, so I decided to hold off until after Camp Wing.

After Monday's exam, we will be exploring the forces and accelerating motion.  We will finish our adventures with Galileo and the idea that objects of different masses will accelerate towards Earth at the same rate.  Hufflepuff already started to play with this, dropping bowling balls and LEGO balls.  Another group played with carts of various masses, and even a LEGO frictionless cart using the PASCO bearings.

 

 

From there we will explore accelerating systems with unequal forces, friction, and Newton's 3rd Law.  Then a brief break for for Camp Wing.

Kinematics and Analyzing Constantly Accelerating Motion

In the past week we explored the motion of accelerating carts down ramps, and what the position, velocity, and acceleration graphs for such a cart looks like.  We used a variety of instruments to measure the motion of the carts from photogates to ultrasonic motion sensors to image analysis.

We produced graphs of the motion which the students were able to analyze.

We asked the question, what happens to the acceleration of a ball at the top of its path when it is thrown up in the air?  To dive into this question we looked at carts with fans on them, and pushing a cart up a ramp.

 

The students thought about this theoretically, and then either performed experiments or played with computer models from PheT.

Here are the computer models if you would like to play with them.

 

 

 

Some interesting discussions about velocity and articles

We had some great verbal discussion about velocity today.  What I thought were straight-forward homework questions turned out to present some deep conceptual misunderstandings.  We explored the definitions of displacement, velocity, and what the average in average velocity really means.  We began to play with carts accelerating down ramps.

Some parents wanted to know more about what we are doing and why, so I have posted the two recent papers we published last year.  One articles was presented at ASEE (American Society of Engineering Education) conference and the other at the IEEE conference.   These articles are rather technical so I will post some non-technical articles soon.

 

Why this is research

Leslie Schneider, the program manager for InterLACE, stopped by to observe our physics classes today.  I asked the students to give some feedback on InterLACE and contrast it with what they have seen in traditional 'lecture' style science classes.  The students overall seemed quite pleased with this teaching style.  When we asked them what was wrong or needed with the software, they have substantial feedback.  In particular, a major bug error shows up whenever you cut and paste symbols from MicrosoftWord.  This is needed for the Greek letters used frequently in physics, and right now for the capitol Delta symbol, for change.

InterLACE was a rapidly evolving piece of software last year, largely based on student and teacher feedback.  So student opinions on what is needed counts!  This is a  gap in the software that we will work to rectify in the next update.

Monday and LEGO Mindstorms

Today we programmed LEGO Mindstorm robots with LabView and designed an experiment to measure the speed of the robot.  As a note to parents, it is important for students to take the content learning seriously.  Many students were unprepared for today's class.  I might even suggest taking notes on the text readings, videos, or blog entries, the way one would for a lecture.  I might have to even require and check such notes.