high school python classes

Ric Werme ric at wermenh.com
Sun Jan 19 13:21:38 EST 2014


> 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


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