Project Description

Interactive Children’s Museum Exhibit where students can learn concepts in Newtonian physics, electricity, magnetism, sound waves, EM spectrum etc. Inspired by “choose-your-own-adventure”; allow kids to put together virtual parts to see what could happen (virtual test), and then they get to put those same parts together in real life and see the result. For example, a kid can select a hand-crank generator, predict how fast they can rotate it to get a certain power output (virtual, calculated), and then actually crank a real generator and see if the measured wattage is the same as predicted. Or back-calculate their rotational speed. Another system could involve distance and light-level sensors and some arduino (or printed circuit board) connections. Sonar sensors are particularly cool and easy to program. Having a graphic explaining how it is working while the kid is using it would be great. This project is open to your imagination, within safety, expense, space, and time constraints.

Goals

Exhibit(s) to teach concepts in Newtonian Physics, electricity, magnetism, sound waves, and/or EM spectrum.

Constraints

Must be safe for children, fit on a table, and not be too expensive.

Impact

Thousands of kids per year get to enjoy your project while learning.

Resources

If you need to purchase images, a monitor, or some small software, that is possible (within reason)

Group Summary

This project is looking to combine virtual simulations with real world interactive activities in order to teach students about physics properties. They are looking to have a visual aid that can then be used to guide the students through a real experiment. The system should be very interactive, allow them to fully customize the results, and in the end use their new knowledge to explore the same concepts in a physical model.

Identified Pains

Difficulty teaching students the current physics properties

Current method would have to be a streamlined implementation with no freedom (a textbook)

Students are unable to test extreme cases as they may be dangerous, instead they are limited to only limited experiments.

This would encourage extreme inputs and many edge cases.

Proposed Problem Description

They need a way to make the learning fun and interactive. However, it may be more beneficial and have a larger impact through more possible exhibits, to only have an app instead of real models.

The app would need to accurately represent all aspects of the exhibit we wish to produce. For this it would need a sufficiently accurate physics engine.

Proposed Goals

The solution must be future proof, platform independent, and able to withstand years of use without fail.

It would have to handle a wide range of inputs, including extreme and potentially physically invalid options.

Engaging for the age group that we’re targeting. It must be easy to use and not laggy.

PO Brainstorming Sheet

Link

Contributors

Bobby Cao

Jordan Faith

Levi Adair

Tom Ficcadenti

Brooke Bullek

Allan La

Andrew Capuano

Daniel Vasquez

Preproposal

Dunni Adenuga

Jordan Voves

Cole Whitley

Group Preposals

https://docs.google.com/a/bucknell.edu/document/d/1JuqqqG-YgYLjd2IEVld-RiQzdRlw84YVFQVlz0flz5A/edit?usp=sharing

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