Sunday, March 20, 2011

Brainiacs electric fence redux

Last year I posted a note about a groovy clip from the now-defunct British science show, Brainiac: Science Abuse (Brainiacs for short). I learnt (I mean learned) that one of the featured circuits was, in essence, an R-2R resistor ladder: a design used in digital to analog conversions.

When I showed the clip to this year's classes, I was compelled to stop the video at specific points and pose questions to encourage predictions and discussions. My inner teacher at work once again.

I've now chopped the original clip up and worked it into a presentation so I could add questions and illustrations where appropriate.

I also developed a brief student worksheet to accompany the video demo. It's what I like to do.

The zipped QuickTime of the preso is kinda hefty (the embedded video bulks it up to nearly 400 MB). And as with all my interactive QuickTimes, it won't stream. You need to download it, unzip it, and run it. But only if you want to!

I think it's worth the time. Your mileage may vary.

Electric Fence zipped interactive QuickTime (huge-normous)

Electric Fence student demo question worksheet (not so big)

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