> I've volunteered to assist with a "pre-engineering" course at the local > high school. The plan is to give the kids (Juniors) some exposure to > different engineering disciplines. Some 40 days or so will be devoted > to Python and programming.
> I'm hoping for suggestions on special topics and interesting > assignments. My high school didn't have "pre-engineering". Bummer. Fortunately, Dad was a EE and took me to work when he had stuff to catch up on Saturdays. I'd like to see some programming assignments tied to other courses and that have some connection to engineering. Math: Prime sieves are easy, but someone might go wild with one. Math: Discrete integration and differentiation? Physics: Ditto. For a printer company I took data from a position encoder on the print head carriage and differentiated it twice to get velocity and acceleration. I never learned in physics how much noise increased with each differentiation. You could start with a GPS track, don't expect the acceleration data to look like anything useful! Physics: I didn't take a simulation course at CMU until I was a junior, but my first significant Algol program when I was a freshman simulated Earth orbiting satellites and displayed them on line printer paper. It used techniques for adjusting the time interval we never discussed in the simulation class. Physics: A simpler thing and well worthwhile (especially since we can no longer launch someone into Earth orbit) is to simulate cars following at various distances with various reaction delays and various amounts of breaking by the lead car. That was one of the class assignments. Not only do you learn something about programming, you learn just how much a delay in a system fouls up analysis (they'll appreciate that years later in a control system course), they'll learn something about why following distances are important while driving. They might even discover it's important to watch several cars ahead! If you're really lucky they might realize just how different traffic flow could be when cars talk to each other and computers do the driving. At least when the weather is good and pavement is dry and visible. Math and physics: reproduce the Lorenz attractor or other simple system described with differential equations that can't be solved directly. The never told me in high school that was a major problem, Lorenz pretty much convinced everyone not only that's the way it is, but to abandon all hope. Students should learn that sooner than later. http://www.technologyreview.com/article/422809/when-the-butterfly-effect-took-flight/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_attractor Biology: Simulate boom and bust cycles (e.g. foxes and rabbits), not really engineering, but interesting and much like the car problem. -Ric _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
