Essays, Posts & Presentations

Electronic Science Experiment Augmented with Wolfram Technologies

Mahnoor Fatima

Author

Mahnoor Fatima

Title

Electronic Science Experiment Augmented with Wolfram Technologies

Description

Wolfram technologies integrated with an electronic experiment to demonstrate the effect of Earth's rotation on phases of day

[WSS21] Electronic Science Experiment Augmented with Wolfram Technologies

Mahnoor Fatima

University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore

Some of the principal factors for the poor quality of STEM education in developing are insufficiently trained teachers and inadequate or inaccessible science laboratories. This notebook summarizes a project which addresses the aforementioned concerns by developing a low-cost educational resource that will allow students to conveniently perform science experiments with the help of Arduino board and Wolfram technologies. This project can be further extended to be integrated with System Model Virtual Labs on physics or electronics to allow the students to practically implement the experiments.

Introduction

Growth research from the past ten years reveals that consideration of educational quality, measured by cognitive skills, greatly alters the study of the role of education in economic development. Therefore, quantity will have little impact if the quality of education is not significantly improved. Also, emphasis has been made to improve the quality of education for elementary level students to maximize the impact of educational reforms.

Surveys reveal that some of the principal factors in the declining quality of education are insufficiently teachers and lack of adequate science laboratories . Undertrained teachers fail to properly communicate the curricular science topics to the students and they end up cramming the facts that should otherwise be comprehended with a thorough understanding of the topic. Moreover, due to poor infrastructure and limited resources, students are unable to perform hands-on experiments. This leaves much to their imagination - they utilize most of their mental capabilities in imagining the experimental setup and are unable to correlate their science topics with the real world. Hence, when a student is asked to “imagine there is a mass m attached with a spring on a frictionless floor...” and is unable to do so, this will not only affect their performance in the class but will also make him wary of science as a subject.

This project aims to address both these concerns by developing educational resources that will allow students to develop science experiments on their own and self-study their outcomes. The experiments use Arduino for data acquisition and Wolfram Mathematica and System Modeler for translating the data and communicating the science topic. The computational notebooks contain details of constructing and running the experiment so that the students can conveniently reproduce them on their own. The components of the science experiments are readily available and are low-cost to make this educational resource more accessible.

Technologies

The following technologies will be employed for developing this project:

◼

Wolfram Technologies

◼

Wolfram Mathematica

◼

Wolfram System Modeler

◼

Arduino microcontroller

Project

For this project, astronomy has been selected as the core theme wherein the concept of day and night will be elaborated by using a hardware model augmented with Wolfram Mathematica and Wolfram System Modeler. Moreover, this project extends to explain the concept of different time zones.

Developing the System Modeler Model

As a first step, a simulation model is developed via Wolfram System Modeler using its ModelPlug library. Two AnalogInputPins are connected to an Arduino board. The Arduino board is assigned the correct port number (“COMX” by default) - the variable present under General -> Parameters. The MaxValue of the pins is set to 10 to allow for a better visualisation of the data.

In[]:=

model=

Out[]=

Preparing the Hardware of the Experiment

The following equipment is needed for the hardware of the experiment:

◼

Light-dependent resistor (LDR) - 10 k

◼

Resistor - 1 k

◼

Arduino board (UNO/Nano)

◼

Globe (or a similarly spherical object with a rod through its axis)

◼

Torch

◼

Connecting wires

The Arduino board is mounted on the globe. One end of the LDR is connected with a resistor. This junction is further connected with the pin A0 (14) of Arduino board with the help of a connecting wire. The free end of the LDR is connected to the 5V pin of the Arduino board while that of the resistor is connected to GND (ground pin). The LDR corresponds to the location of the globe - preferably at the equator - from where the brightness will be measured. Similarly, the brightness of another ‘location’ on the globe can be measured by mounting another LDR at that place and connecting it with the resistor and pin A1 (15) of Arduino board.

The final experimental setup looks like this:

Developing the Wolfram Computational Notebook

The learning material will be disseminated in the form of a computational notebook. This notebook is a self-explanatory learning resource which comprises a theoretical background on the topic, a detailed description of the experiment, and the Wolfram plots to visualize the experimental data.

The System Modeler model developed earlier is imported in Wolfram Mathematica as simModel. Then, a link with Wolfram System Modeler is established. The real-time simulation is started as comm and the system variables of simModel are plotted in simPlot. In the plot, the peaks are colored yellow and the trenches blue to correspond to the the relative phase of the day; the color indicates whether it’s day or night for the sensor.

simModel="AstronomyModel";Needs["WSMLink`"];comm=WSMRealTimeSimulate[simModel];simPlot=WSMRealTimePlot[comm,{"analogInput1.y"},5,ColorFunction->Function[{x,y},Blend[{Blue,Yellow},y]],FillingAxis]comm["Start"]

Out[]=

The initiation of the simulation can be verified by the blinking of the TX pin of Arduino, indicating the transmission of data. This data will then be plotted on simPlot in realtime.

The state of simulation can be checked by using the following command:

In[]:=

comm["State"]

Out[]=

Running

The model is configured to collect data until explicitly stopped by the user. To stop the simulation, run the following command:

In[]:=

comm["Stop"]

Time Zones

The concept of time zones has also been covered in the computational notebook by simultaneously displaying the data from the LDRs mounted at different locations of the globes; the peaks at different time intervals indicate that different places do not see the same brightness of the sun and hence have different times so that they all can have noon at 12:00 pm.

In[]:=

simModel="AstronomyModel";Needs["WSMLink`"];comm=WSMRealTimeSimulate[simModel];simPlot1=WSMRealTimePlot[comm,{"analogInput1.y"},4,ColorFunction->Function[{x,y},Blend[{Blue,Yellow},y]],FillingAxis]simPlot2=WSMRealTimePlot[comm,{"analogInput2.y"},4,ColorFunction->Function[{x,y},Blend[{Blue,Yellow},y]],FillingAxis]comm["Start"]

Stop the simulation using the following command:

In[]:=

comm["Stop"]

Instructions for Running the Experiment

For running the experiment, first enter the correct port number in the System Modeler model. This can be found in the Device Manager. Then, connect the Arduino board to the PC/laptop where the computational notebook is saved. Run the code present in the the notebook. Place a lighted torch near the model and rotate the model about its axis. Observe the changes in the plot(s).

Precautions

◼

Connect the components firmly as they may get disconnected during the rotation of the model.

Conclusion and Future Work

In this project, I have integrated a Wolfram notebook with Arduino to develop an educational resource for middle-level students. The notebook uses a System Modeler model to acquire data with an Arduino microcontroller and this data is then displayed via Wolfram graphics. This notebook allows students to study the experimental data in realtime and make relevant observations. Also, the expository nature of the Wolfram notebook requires minimal involvement of the teachers and students can study and perform the experiments on their own.

This project is the first in a series of computational notebooks which will employ Wolfram technologies for making interactive and self-explanatory science experiments. Moreover, this project can be integrated with System Model Virtual Labs to allow students to practically perform the experiments developed under this resource.

Keywords

◼

Wolfram language

◼

Educational technology

◼

Wolfram computational notebooks

◼

Arduino for education

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Ankit Naik, for his mentorship, guidance, and technical support throughout the project, and for providing me with an insider’s view of System Modeler Virtual Labs. I would also like to thank Paul Abbott, director of the Educational Innovation Track, for his valuable suggestions for defining specifics of the project and improving its deliverables.

References

◼

Waseem, M. H. & Fatima, M. (2018). Development of Low-Cost Demonstrative Experiments for Primary School Science. International Conference on Education 2018: Science Beyond Classroom.

◼

Olakulehin, F. K. (2007). Information and communication technologies in teacher training and professional development in Nigeria. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 8(1), 133-142.

Wolfram Demonstration Projects

◼

[WSS17] The Galileo’s inclined plane experiment. Available at https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/1136719

Cite this as: Mahnoor Fatima, "Electronic Science Experiment Augmented with Wolfram Technologies" from the Notebook Archive (2021), https://notebookarchive.org/2021-07-62kb1g5