When I got home yesterday and told Kelly to guess what book I bought her, her first guess was Flatland. I had talked to Kelly and Christian about Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland and how it was considered to be a very good way to introduce people to and understanding of the fourth dimension. They were excited and wanted to read the book right away. So this morning, I ordered the book from Amazon. I am looking forward to reading it to them.

Last night Christian started gathering items for his pinhole camera. He is checking off the need items on the list and as soon as we have all the items accumulated and all the oatmeal is eaten out of the box, we will start building the pinhole camera.

Planning: I have been giving some additional thought about what to put in my little homeschool robotics class. Like before, I believe it is a very important idea to introduce one concept at a time to the students. The problem is that I never considered that it might be a great idea to have continuity between projects with to complementary goals in mind. First, all the material needs to be well understood. Second, the final product of the class would be a single, relatively complex robotic application.

Here is a preliminary idea of such a concept with a description of each chapter in the book, the concept described, and the part that the resultant device described in the chapter will play in the completed robotic applicaton:

Chapter Concept System Element
1 Introduction
Describe the big picture		 N/A
2 Programming conveyors, buttons, switches and
lights with Python		 Give the computer the ability to read the state of
the buttons and switches and the ability to turn the
lights and conveyor on and off.
3 Building the buttons, lights, switches, and conveyor
into a working subsystem		 Recognizing when the chess clock button has
been pushed by one side or the other and turning
on a light to show whose turn it is to move.
Moving the chess board on a conveyor from in
front of the robot to a position in front of the
opponent
4 Programming a stepper motor Give the ability of the robot arm to move one of
its joints.
5 Programming stepper motors to move
together		 Give the robot the ability to move all of its joints
in unison to put the robot hand over a desired
location.