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Re: [Phys-L] constructive projects



On 01/02/2015 08:29 AM, Paul Lulai wrote:

[snip]

Impressive. That seems like a well-thought-out program.

The instructors got together. [....]

That's modestly impressive right there. That's a sign of
a well-run school.

If the stars align, we use the controllers, hardware, and
programming to learn other things as well.

I assume that's a considerable understatement. I assume
there are a thousand "other things" that get taught along
the way.
*) For example, it's impossible to do much of anything
with a robot without using the concept of velocity, and
interpreting it as rate-of-change of position. One "could"
represent it as speed+direction, but it soon becomes obvious
that the (Vx,Vy) component representation is more convenient
for computational purposes. This means that when the kids
get to high-school physics, the concepts of vector and
velocity are much less mysterious.

I assume that "stars aligning" is a figure of speech that
mostly means "time permitting". However, you can rearrange
the schedule more easily than you can rearrange the stars.
In the previous example, time spent on robot vectors pays for
itself when we come to physics vectors, with time left over,
so we turn a profit.

*) As another example, the common corpse standards call for
teaching probability. I realize that this usually gets
verrry short shrift, so this is maybe not the perfect
example, but please bear with me, since probability *is*
actually important. Robots and computer games make very
heavy use of random numbers.
-- Suppose we are building an exploring robot, or a
vacuum-cleaner robot. A random strategy is not truly
optimal, but it is not bad, and it would take you many
thousands of hours of programming effort to come up
with anything appreciably better.
-- In almost any nontrivial game, sport, or battle, you
want to make a certain number of random moves. Otherwise,
if the adversary can predict your moves, you are going
to get pwned.

There is a subtle but important point here, namely that
this introduces randomness /as your friend/. This is a
much better than seeing randomness for the first time in
connection with experimental error, where the randomness
is something we would like to get rid of. This has some
profound implications for how you look at the world. There
are far too many people who obsessively seek absolute
truth and certainty, when it would be better to accept
some uncertainty and seek good ways of dealing with the
uncertainty. There are far too many charlatans trying
to sell you absolute truth and certainty. Run away!

Returning to the main point of this message: Construction
projects in general allow kids to (a) exercise some
creativity, and (b) actually /use/ the concepts that
they are supposed to be learning.

Oyr elementary specialist wasnt comfortable switching from scratch
(which is probably easiest for younger kids).

I agree with him on that.

I was shocked to find that kids werent comfortable building with the
technichs system or with traditional legos.

That's a problem.

It's to some extent a fixable problem. If you give preschool
kids a bunch of blocks they *will* build stuff: castles,
towers, falling "domino" cascades, et cetera. For more on
this, see below.

On 01/01/2015 03:54 PM, Anthony Lapinski wrote:

At our school we talk about 3D printers. However, I have kids who can't
use a meter stick! Don't know how to use a protractor.

There has to be a process: It doesn't start with 3D printers
and it doesn't start in HS physics. It needs to start with
building stuff out of unit blocks (in pre-K) and progress
through Duplo blocks, paper towers, toothpick bridges, Lego
robots, et cetera. There should be construction projects in
each and every grade. And by "construction" I mean /designing/
and building, with lots of scope for originality and creativity
... not some hyper-regimented color-by-number assignment.

On 01/02/2015 07:22 AM, Philip Keller wrote:

They are [...] not completely convinced that thinking is
a way to find things out.

Projects can help with that. As soon as you start building
stuff, there are obvious advantages to being clever about
it. There are many incentives that were not there (or not
obvious) before. In particular, by way of contrast, if you
are doing the usual end-of-chapter problems, there is no
incentive to think outside the box. The safe strategy is
to get the same answer as everybody else; thinking about
it just gets you into trouble.