Project Guides (Page 7)

How to Use a micro:bit

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A micro:bit is a tiny, programmable board with lots of built-in sensors. You can use one for a variety of fun science projects, even if you do not have any programming or electronics experience! This page contains tutorial videos that will help you with setting up, programming, and using your micro:bit. Check out our list of micro:bit projects when you're ready to move beyond the tutorials! Read more

Linear & Nonlinear Springs Tutorial

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This tutorial provides a basic summary of linear and nonlinear springs and their associated equations for force, stiffness, and potential energy. You will need a basic understanding of calculus (integrals and derivatives) to understand the section on nonlinear springs. Definitions A linear spring is one with a linear relationship between force and displacement, meaning the force and displacement are directly proportional to each other. A graph showing force vs. displacement for a linear spring… Read more

Microorganisms Safety Guide

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Bacteria are ubiquitous, and live within the human gut, and in every corner of our environment. We come in contact with bacteria on a daily basis. Hand washing is 99.9% effective at decontaminating us from bacteria that might reside on the skin. Therefore, when the proper safety precautions are taken, colonies of microorganisms can be safely isolated from homes, yards, gardens, etc. The majority of microorganisms are non-pathogenic, but bacterial cultures or petri plates that contain any type… Read more

Sample Bibliography: MLA Works Cited Format

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"Battery." Encyclopedia Britannica. 1990. "Best Batteries." Consumer Reports Magazine 32 Dec. 1994: 71-72. Booth, Steven A. "High-Drain Alkaline AA-Batteries." Popular Electronics 62 Jan. 1999: 58. Brain, Marshall. "How Batteries Work." howstuffworks. 1 Aug. 2006 <http://home.howstuffworks.com /battery.htm>. "Cells and Batteries." The DK Science Encyclopedia. 1993. Dell, R. M., and D. A. J.… Read more

Sample Size: How Many Survey Participants Do I Need?

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In order to have confidence that your survey results are representative, it is critically important that you have a large number of randomly-selected participants in each group you survey. So what exactly is "a large number?" For a 95% confidence level (which means that there is only a 5% chance of your sample results differing from the true population average), a good estimate of the margin of error (or confidence interval) is given by 1/√N, where N is the number of participants or… Read more

Storyboards

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Storyboards are a great way to visually depict an experience or an interaction among people or people and objects. By creating a storyboard, you can break down the experience or interaction into all of its more specific components over time, which allows you to analyze more closely. There are three main points during the design process in which you may want to create a storyboard: during the early stages of your research, during the prototyping stage, and at the end when you are presenting… Read more

Test and Redesign

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User Test The first step in user testing is to get in contact with the users of your solution. Go back to your problem statement, and remember your potential users. You will want to test your solution on this group of people. For example, if you are designing a website for kindergarten students, you will want to test your final solution with kindergarteners. When it comes to testing, there is no such thing as too many testers! The more people that you are able to test with the more you… Read more

Variance & Standard Deviation

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It would be useful to have a measure of scatter that has the following properties: The measure should be proportional to the scatter of the data (small when the data are clustered together, and large when the data are widely scattered). The measure should be independent of the number of values in the data set (otherwise, simply by taking more measurements the value would increase even if the scatter of the measurements was not increasing). The… Read more

APA Formatted Example Bibliography

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SCIENCE BUDDIES SAMPLE TITLE1 References Booth, S.A. (January 1999). High-Drain Alkaline AA-Batteries. Popular Electronics, 62, 58. Dell, R. M., and Rand, D.A.J. (2001). Understanding batteries. Cambridge, UK: The Royal Society of Chemistry. Devitt, T. (2001, August 2). Lightning injures four at music festival. The Why? Files. Retrieved from http://whyfiles.org/137lightning/index.html Dove, R. (1998). Lady freedom among us. The University of Virginia Alderman Library Electronic Text… Read more

Development Work

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Development Work Development involves the refinement and improvement of a solution. Some development work might be needed very early in the design process in order to evaluate different potential solutions. For example, it might not be possible to compare the cost of early design concepts without doing some development work to estimate what the cost of an alternative would actually be. Development work continues throughout the design process, often even after a product ships to… Read more

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