Complex Problems
Recommended Classroom Hours: 16-22
Assessments: Available with Teacher PD
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Module 4: Complex Problems
At Techxellent we believe that in order to maximise students’ potential and achieve a level of excellence they need to take on big challenges which in all likelihood will not be solved at the first attempt. After all, professional mathematicians do not spend their day solving easy math problems. Rather they spend most of their time taking on world changing difficult problems, often without success. Still, it is this experience of pushing your limits and attempting amazing things that is so much fun and helps those who do it to become a little smarter every day! In this module, you have three complex problems to choose from. We recommend you cover at least two.
Options for Student Projects:
Option 1: Ski Racing Game
Setting up ski races is something that could be performed really well by a computer program. We have some 40-60 sets of gates that the skier has to go through. These need to be positioned at different angles and distances, which we can do using random number ranges. Then there is an issue of the skier; here the students learn how to perform two different movement dynamics (mouse following and arrow activation). The main goal of the students is to fine tune the game dynamics and find a way to measure and record the times of the skiers so that they can challenge their friends to beat their best times.
Option 2: Fruit Slicing Game
What if you could interact with Scratch by waving your hands around? Well you can, and all you need is an ordinary webcam! Scratch has a way of measuring the movement of your hands and any other object you bring into the room being viewed by the webcam. The game you will see is similar to the popular game called Fruit Ninja, but it’s a whole lot more fun to wave your hands around than swipe a phone screen. The ultimate goal is to slice up a specific number of apples and oranges.
Option 3: Physics Engine
This is the hardest challenge, designed for the students who are doing really well with coding and also enjoying the integrated mathematics. The idea here is that every popular 3D game uses physics to simulate the real world and make the game feel realistic. This is precisely what the students will be asked to do with a ball object which should bounce off the walls in natural arcs and eventually come to rest. Once this big challenge is solved, students can easily create realistic soccer or volleyball games
Your Instructor
Sanjin combines his passion for teaching and education with an in-depth understanding of a vast array of technologies. He graduated in 2007 from The Australian National University, majoring in Robotics and Computer Vision. He has a unique ability to adapt various engineering concepts into hands on classroom activities and teach everything from Scratch, Python, Arduino to Raspberry Pi to very young audiences. His role with Techxellent centres around doing this on a larger scale in an easy to follow ‘progression model’ which imbues students with a new mindset required for innovation and analytical thinking. In 2016 his goal is to raise the bar in student engagement with programming and robotics by enabling students to communicate with computers much like they do with their friends— using facial expressions and hand gestures.
Class Curriculum
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StartSki Racing (4:45)
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StartSki Racing Hint 1 (6:15)
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StartSki Racing Hint 2 (4:14)
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StartSki Racing Hint 3 (2:01)
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StartMotion Control Fruit Slicing Game (4:07)
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StartMotion Control Fruit Slicing Game: Hint 1 (4:49)
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StartMotion Control Fruit Slicing Game: Hint 2 (3:41)
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StartMotion Control Fruit Slicing Game: Hint 3 (2:49)
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StartPhysics Engine (5:09)
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StartPhysics Engine: Hint 1 (9:04)
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StartPhysics Engine: Hint 2 (7:32)