1. Time Machines
Lab Book
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2. The Problem Do you have trouble waking up in the morning?
Are you often in a foul mood when you get up?
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3. The Mission
Your mission is to build a cuckoo alarm clock that wakes you up on time and puts you in a good mood.
It could tickle you, play rock ‘n roll music, spray you with water, beat a drum, tell you a joke and more. Each hour your cuckoo clock could make a critter come to life.
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4. The Plan
A Scratch program will keep time, play tunes, control animated characters and drive motors that make your cuckoo critters shake, rattle and roll.
Research time machines.
Describe your solution.
Draw animated critters.
Record jokes, quotes, and music
Write a program to control your time machine.
Build mechanical wake-up mechanisms.
Present your solution to the world.
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5. Time Time is a basic concept in almost everything we do.
Time is precious.
Time is money.
Time is the fourth dimension.
Time flies.
Time out!
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6. Sun Dial
One of the oldest scientific instruments was invented around 3500 BC. During the day the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. A sun dial will cast a shadow that can be calibrated to tell day time.
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7. Water Clock
Water clocks may be as old as sun dials. This is a Greek Clepsdra (Water Thief)
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8. Sand Clock
Sand clocks (or hour glasses) were used in early ships for dead reckoning navigation.
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9. Pendulum Clock
A swinging pendulum has a fixed time between swings. This property can be designed to keep very accurate time. A clever ‘escapement’ mechanism converts swinging motion to rotation motion.
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10. Electric Clock
Electric motors eliminated the need for frequent resetting of previous clocks.
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11. Atomic Clock
As scientists required extremely accurate measures of time, the atomic clock was invented.
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12. Cuckoo Clock
Your mission is to design machine that tells time and alerts you at specified times during the day.
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13. Disney Clock
Many visitors come to watch this clock tell time at Disney World.
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14. Cuckoo Birds Use PowerPoint to create animated cuckoo birds.
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15. Quotes, Jokes, Tunes Create content for your time machine.
“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
“Why did the duck fly south?
Because it would take too long to walk!”
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16. Scratch Program Control
Program execution time impacts clock accuracy.
Which program is more accurate and why?
How much time is lost each minute in the first program?
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17. Cuckoo Critters
Build a flock of cuckoo critters and make them come alive every hour using the Build-It-Yourself Scratch motor controller.
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