Computer Science Projects, Lessons, Activities (Page 6)

Program a Sound Level Meter to Help Protect Your Hearing

Science Fair Project Idea

Engineering Design Process

Have you ever said, "That hurt my ears!" when someone yelled loudly right next to you? Do you cover your ears when a fire truck drives by with the sirens blaring? It is good to protect your ears—even sounds that do not "hurt" can cause hearing damage if you are exposed to them for too long. In this project, you will program a device that alerts you when sounds have exceeded safe levels long enough to cause hearing damage. Read more

Program to Check (or Solve) Sudoku Puzzles

Science Fair Project Idea

Engineering Design Process

Sudoku is an extremely popular puzzle game. You start with a 9x9 grid of squares, which contains three smaller 3x3 subgrids. Some of the squares are filled in with numbers 1 through 9. Your goal is to fill in the remaining blank squares such that each column, each row, and each 3x3 subgrid contains the numbers 1-9. No number can appear more than once in any column, row, or subgrid. For a given starting puzzle, can you write a program to check if a Sudoku solution is valid using a programming… Read more

Program Your Own COVID-19 or Flu Simulator with Scratch

STEM Activity

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Are you curious about how public health officials think about and model how diseases like flu and COVID-19 move from one person to another? In this activity, you will use the kid-friendly programming language Scratch to write a simulation that uses bouncing dots to represent healthy and sick people. The simulation will show how we can take measures to slow the spread of a transmissible disease. Read more

Save a Life! Teach Hands-Only™ CPR

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

What would you do if you saw one of your friends lying on the floor, not breathing, possibly having a heart attack? Call 911? Start CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation)? Those would both be important things to do! But do you know CPR? Do your friends and family know CPR? Chances are, most of them don't. Even if they do know CPR, they might be hesitant to use their mouths to perform it. You can change that though. In this science project, you'll create a simple, interactive game that can teach… Read more

Sounds Like RFID: Using a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Reader to Make Musical Instruments

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Passports, identification cards, bus passes, and even some credit cards contain RFID tags. An RFID (radio-frequency identification) tag allows a card to be read by a computer from a short distance away. While this is very useful in everyday life, would you believe you can make music with it? RFID + sampled music sounds + a little crafting = a fun musical instrument that is limited only by your imagination. In this science project, you will make handbells out of paper cups that play real sounds,… Read more

Wearable Limp Detection Device

Science Fair Project Idea

Engineering Design Process

Have you (or anyone you know) ever sprained an ankle or broken a leg? It might have taken some practice to walk again after recovering from an injury. Some people might even need to work with a physical therapist. In this project you will program a wearable device to recognize when someone is limping instead of walking normally. Read more

What's the Fastest Way to Sort a List?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Imagine that you have a list of names of all the people in your class. Someone asks you to put them in alphabetical order. How would you go about doing it? Would you first go through the entire list and look for all the "A" names? Then go through it again and look for all the "B" names, and so on? Do you think going through the list over and over again for each letter would be inefficient? What if you had hundreds, thousands, or even millions of names? How would you ever alphabetize them… Read more

Write a Program to Analyze Text and Guess the Author

Science Fair Project Idea

Engineering Design Process

Do you think you could figure out if two different anonymous messages were written by the same person? What about telling the difference between text written by a human and something written by artificial intelligence (AI)? How about identifying the author of a historical text? Each individual author may have their own personal style, and analyzing text mathematically can help you identify that style. Can you write a computer program that takes a passage of text as input, and calculates the… Read more

Analog vs. Digital Signals

Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th

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We hear the word "digital" all the time—digital technology, digital device, digital TV, etc. But what does it actually mean? In this lesson plan, your students will learn how digital signals allow us to reliably transmit and store information. Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

MS-PS4-3. Integrate qualitative scientific and technical information to support the claim that digitized signals are a more reliable way to encode and transmit information than analog signals.

Build an Adaptive Game Controller for a Raspberry Pi

Science Fair Project Idea

Engineering Design Process

People with limited mobility, especially in their hands, may not be able to use traditional video game controllers. Adaptive game controllers use a variety of peripherals, like larger buttons, foot pedals, or specialized joysticks, to let people with limited mobility play video games. This video shows how to build a very simple adaptive controller that works with Scratch games on a Raspberry Pi. Can you build an adaptive game controller for a hardware platform and game of your choice? If you… Read more

Computer Science Projects, Lessons, Activities (84 results)

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