Sensors Alive: Bring Physics to Life

Demystify abstract physics phenomena like light, sound, and heat as never before — with this imaginative, engrossing, highly innovative, gamified sensor physics lab. The core of this science kit is an app-based video game in which you absorb and interpret real-world sensor data that you collect from your environment to generate and interact with a diverse array of creatures. Create, collect, play with, and take care of your creatures in the app, and out and about!

In a simulated bioengineering lab inside the game, kids play the role of scientists who use readings taken from three physical sensor pods outside the game. The readings are then transferred and integrated into the game via the base station. The sensor data dictates the different attributes your bioengineered creatures will possess as they respond and adapt to the data they receive. For example, if you take a low temperature measurement, the creature will have long hair in order to keep warm. If the temperature is high, it will perhaps have scaly skin like a lizard. Or, a low light level captured by the light sensor might yield a creature with huge eyes designed expressly in order to see better in the dark, while a high sound level reading might result in a creature with tiny ears. Additional attributes are controlled directly by the settings in the app. All together, these myriad variables lead to a seemingly infinite number of creatures you could create.

Continue to use the sensors to capture data that lets you care for your creatures, feed them, play with them, create habitats for them, and generate more creatures — all the while developing an intuitive sense of the different measurements you are taking with the sensors; as you learn more about your environment, so will your creatures!. You will gain experience in measuring light levels (useful for understading photography) sound volumes, and temperatures with the three sensor pods, and learn about the physics behind light, sound, and heat. Physics discovery comes alive as you see the tangible (virtual) results of your sensor experiments!

The kit contains three sensor pods, base station, app, and quick-start poster so that you can dive right in!  Operation requires a tablet or smartphone running recent versions of iOS or Android.

Features:

• Demystify abstract physics phenomena like light, sound, and heat with this gamified sensor lab
• Includes three sensor pods (sound, light, and temperature) that allow you to connect the app to the outside world
• Generate creatures in the app that respond and adapt to the sensor data you collect using the sensor pods
• Feed them, play with them, create habitats for them, and generate more creatures — all the while developing an intuitive sense of the different measurements you are taking
• Physics discovery comes alive as you see the tangible (virtual) results of your sensor experiments!