Need science experiment ideas for the summer

[conuly]

Also, art projects that aren't all either "Uh, here are some supplies, get messy" or "These are the carefully cut out parts, please make yours exactly like mine". Gosh, I hate the latter. I want all teachers of young children to memorize the phrase "it's the process, not the product" and apply it religiously.

Anyway, trying to do some fun and lightly educational things over the summer to make up for forcing Eva to do - gasp! - math every day. (The math is not optional.)

Comments

Re: art idea

[kengr]

Teaching them a bit about cryptography could be fun too. Using codes/ciphers is fun.

You can get into math and statistics by showing them how ciphers get broken.

buried somewhere in storage is https://www.amazon.com/Cryptanalysis-Microcomputers-Caxton-Foster/dp/0810451743

The BASIC programs were written in Commodore BASIC and the typesetters didn't know what to do with some of the symbols. But it was possible to translate it to a more normal BASIC.

Had programs for several types of encryption, as well as ones for analyzing ciphertext to crack it.

I and some friends got in a "code war" with some other folks on a local BBS. We had a couple of amateur cryptographers trying to crack our ciphers. They did fairly well until I got evil.

I created a *bit* level cipher instead of a character level one. (Basically converted the input text to the old 5-bit Baudot code, then took the resulting bitstream and converted it to printable ASCII characters.