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A-Mazing Robot
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This activity lets you program your 'robot' (a willing friend) to pick up and dispose of some 'toxic waste' using as few commands as possible.

Public Key Encryption: Kid Krypto
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In this activity, learners conduct a simulation exercise related to public key encryption and try to intercept a message sent between two learners.

Battleships: Searching Algorithms
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This activity explores the main algorithms that are used as the basis for searching on computers, using different variations on the game of battleships.

Guess My Number
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In this game, learners experience how computers divide a big problem into many smaller ones and how they use binary "yes"/"no" questions.

Tiny Particles, Big Trouble!
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In this activity, learners discover why some nanoscale science and technology is done in the controlled environment of a clean room, what clean rooms are like, and how scientists help keep the clean r

Twenty Guesses: Information Theory
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This activity introduces the idea that computer scientists measure information by how "surprising" a message is.

Kinetic Sculpture: Program the Pico Cricket to Make Your Art Light Up or Spin
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Use a Pico Cricket (micro-controller) to animate your art! You can program a Pico Cricket to make your art spin, light up, or make music.

Inkjet Printer
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In this activity, learners investigate how inkjet printers produce tiny, precise drops of ink.

Space Weather Action Center
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In this interdisciplinary activity, learners create a Space Weather Action Center (SWAC) to monitor solar storms and develop real SWAC news reports.

Smart Domino Tricks
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In this activity, you take regular dominoes, and turn them into conductive switches that can turn on a LEGO RCX block or Pico Cricket (micro controller). LEGO RCX block or Pico Cricket is required.

Musical Sculpting Machine: Squeeze Play-Doh to Make Music
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Play-Doh is conductive! Use the semiconductive qualities of Play-Doh to make your own squeezable instrument. Pico Cricket is required.

Build a Bubble Circuit
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In this engineering design challenge, learners make a bubble maze that allows bubbles to move through a series of “on” and “off” switches.

Fruit Xylophone: Fruit Salad Instrument of the Future!
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This is a perfect summertime lunch activity! Pico Cricket is required (micro controller). First, get a bunch of cut up fruit, line them up, then plug a piece of fruit with a Pico Cricket sensor clip.

Paint by the Numbers
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In this pencil and paper activity, learners work in pairs and simulate how astronomical spacecraft and computers create images of objects in space.

Interactive Pencil Drawings: Drawings That Tell a Story!
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Margaret Pezalla-Granlund, a Minnesota artist, came up with this really fun and surprising activity using graphite from a pencil, connected with a Pico Cricket to tell a story: "The first time I saw s

The Poor Cartographer: Graph Coloring
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In this activity, learners help a poor cartographer color in the countries on a map, making sure each country is colored a different color than any of its neighbors.

Count the Dots: Binary Numbers
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Data in computers is stored and transmitted as a series of zeros and ones. Learners explore how to represent numbers using just these two symbols, through a binary system of cards.

Programming Languages: Harold the Robot
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In this activity related to computer programming, learners give directions to a "robot" (either an adult or another learner) and find out which instructions the robot is able to follow, and how their

Pico Cricket Compass
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Learners can program a compass to draw a circle by itself using a Pico Cricket, some Legos, and lots of tape! Pico Cricket is required.

Color by Numbers: Image Representation
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Computers store drawings, photographs, and other pictures using only numbers. Through this activity, learners decode numbers to create pictures using the same process that computers use.