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Kinetic Sculpture: Program the Pico Cricket to Make Your Art Light Up or Spin
Source Institutions
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.
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Build Your Own Robot Arm
Source Institutions
In this lesson, learners develop a robot arm using common materials. Learners explore design, construction, and teamwork, as well as materials selection and use.
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Inkjet Printer
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners investigate how inkjet printers produce tiny, precise drops of ink.
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Space Weather Action Center
Source Institutions
In this interdisciplinary activity, learners create a Space Weather Action Center (SWAC) to monitor solar storms and develop real SWAC news reports.
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Smart Domino Tricks
Source Institutions
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.
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Musical Sculpting Machine: Squeeze Play-Doh to Make Music
Source Institutions
Play-Doh is conductive! Use the semiconductive qualities of Play-Doh to make your own squeezable instrument. Pico Cricket is required.
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Fruit Xylophone: Fruit Salad Instrument of the Future!
Source Institutions
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.
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Electric Messages: Then and Now
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners explore electronic communication, the Morse Code system, and advances all the way through text messaging. Learners build a simple circuit, send messages to one another.
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Interactive Pencil Drawings: Drawings That Tell a Story!
Source Institutions
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
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Pico Cricket Compass
Source Institutions
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.
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LEGO Orrery
Source Institutions
Use this model to demonstrate the goal of NASA's Kepler Mission: to find extrasolar planets through the transit method.
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Wash This Way
Source Institutions
In this activity on page 4 of the PDF, learners investigate the importance of washing their hands.
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Clap Sensor: Build a Sound Sensor Using a Pico Cricket
Source Institutions
This activity requires a Pico Cricket (tiny computer). Learners work on designing and building a sound sensor out of household materials, like plastic wrap and cardboard.
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Night Lights
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners create night lights using a plastic cup, programmable PICO Cricket, tri-color LED, and sensor.
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Push Pull Painter
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners create painting machines that can paint moving forwards and backwards.
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Circuits with Friends
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners explore the parts of a circuit by modeling, as a group, a “human” circuit.
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Sound Representation: Modems Unplugged
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners listen to songs and decode hidden messages based on the same principle as a modem. As a final challenge, learners decode the binary messages in a music video.
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Cactus Needle Phonograph
Source Institutions
Build a phonograph record player using a cactus needle, a record, LEGOs gear box, and a piece of paper! This activity uses a Pico Cricket to turn the motor.
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EEEEK--A Mouse!
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners explore the concept of how engineering solved the problem of human/computer interface.
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Arduino Blink Challenge
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners explore computer programming and the impact of computers on society. Learners build and test a program to turn a light on and off using an Arduino board.