Development of Microprocessor Based Physics Lab System for Undergraduate and K-12 Education

The goal of this project is to utilize low-cost microprocessors as brains in educational lab setups. These brains (in our case a Wrover ESP32 chip) can be used to acquire data in a lab activity, and then communicate this data through Wi-Fi back to a host-device. We are developing a set of experiments so that the system can be used in a modular fashion with various i2c based devices. The system is open source so that individual users can also develop their own protocols if desired. The first step of this project was to create a prototype device using a six axis gyroscope/accelerometer. Motion information is read by the local microprocessor and transmitted to a host device. Locally, a small screen mounted on the microprocessor can be used to display information in real time, max/min data, or be set to display information in graphical format. In this setup, one can implement the device for use in experiments using carts, collisions, or even to monitor aerial experiments such as catapults or egg drops. We will test the system in various classroom environments to ascertain lerning effectiveness as compared to traditional lab setups. Hopefully, we can develop a set of modular labs that can be integrated into education systems at a low-cost to enable advanced labs to be fully accessible to all, even on a small budget.

Thanks,

Logan Ingraham