May 13 deadline for middle school science activity
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011posted by: Tom Loughran
Sensing Our World is a week-long workshop for Michiana middle school students held at Notre Dame during the week of June 20. This summer’s theme, “Science through Time”, has some of us scurrying in preparation.
One of the activities we’re preparing is the development of a mathematical model from high-speed photography of insect flight. Like most good ideas, this one is easier to sketch than to implement. Below is a portion of our proof-of-concept video, courtesy of an insect who donated some time to science. Shot at 1000 frames per second, several seconds of lead before flight are included for students to acclimate to the time signature. Kindly overlook the video quality…we’re still “working out the bugs”:)
Students will record flight data, create a mathematical model, and (we hope) compare them with computational models of this flight created with Alice programming by older student volunteers (yet to be recruited:) We’re expecting to have a lot of fun. Apply by May 13!
