STEAM with Dad

Originally, the main reason why I made Minecraft salvation was; unlike the other projects, due to a school exam. And in case you thought I was a PhD, I'm not, and yes, I go to school, hence, some of my projects originate with an exam or a test. The game story line is about a group of Minecraft mobs (living things that are not humans in Minecraft) which decided to destroy the Minecraft world and turn it into cardboard. The goal of the game is to kill the five mobs: Creeper, Stray, Skeleton, Warden and Ender dragon. Only then, will Minecraft world survive so that all the kids and adults in the world can play Minecraft again; actually, realistically not the adults.  At the beginning of the game you can choose your favourite launcher and ball. You are then given ten shots to shoot all the non moving targets:  Creeper, Stray, Skeleton and Warden and the moving target, the Ender dragon. If you don't manage to defeat them in ten shots or less you loose and Minecraft will be destroyed.

  Today I will be telling you about a mission called Europa a Clipper. Mission The main goal of the mission is to find whether there could be life under the surface of Europa. Mission will launch on October 2024 and arrive to Jupiter on 2030. The mission will end on 2034 after completing 20 flybys as close as 25 kilometres (2.5 times higher than a plane) to scan the entire moon. Spacecraft Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft ever developed by NASA. Since it has to travel so far, it has an array of solar panels which is 27 metres wide when deployed. All electronics are shielded in a titanium and aluminium vault to protect them from Jupiter's radiation. Destination Europa is one of the four moons discovered by Galileo. Europa is the second closest moon to Jupiter in between Io and Ganymede. Io is the most volcanic body in our solar system. Europa has the biggest ocean in the solar system and Ganymede is the biggest moon in the solar system. Joining the mission Yo

This project is about building a device that measures how long you have been in the sun. This is very important in Australia because of the ozone layer. They always tell us in school to reapply sunscreen every 2 hours but I am using this project for a coding challenge. This project uses the onboard LEDs as a brightness sensor. The detects all kind of light, not only ultra-violet which is the real danger, but it still helps me prove the idea. A real product should use an UV sensor and be more compact. This is the code. It uses a variable to count how many seconds you have been under the sun. The Micro:bit warns you with a sound if it has gone over the time limit, so to run this code you will need a Micro:bit version 2. After testing the code in the sun and indoors I set the brightness limit to 250. When the reading is below 250 it will not count. Pressing button A shows you how long you have been in the sun. Once you reapply sunscreen you need to press button B to restart. The time limi

In this blog post I made a step counter. I am planning to use this for a coding challenge in the place where I live. The purpose is to help people track how much moderate activity they do The solution uses a Micro:bit which is the same microcontroller for kids that I have used in other projects. This project uses the accelerometer to count your foot steps. The accelerometer is a type of sensor that detects movement. These are the movements you can detect with the accelerometer. My project uses "on shake" This is the code. I made a variable called "steps" that keeps track of how many steps have been detected. It gets increased by 2 every time it gets shaken because we have two legs. If button A is pressed it will set the "steps" to 0 and if you press button B it will show how many steps you have walked so far. In the following video you can how it works

In this blogpost I will tell you about a program I made so that anyone can practice times tables for free. In order to learn the times tables you need someone to ask you random questions but if your parents/carers are busy, this program will never say "I am busy". When you click the green flag the ghost glides on to stage and will ask you 20 random questions. It will tell you if your answer is correct. If you get it wrong it tells you the right answer. However, it doesn't keep track of how many questions you get right or wrong so that you don't get upset. The important thing is to practice often and not to let your mistakes make you sad. By default it will ask you 20 questions from all times tables between 2 and 9. If you have an account in Scratch you can modify it to suit your needs. The important code is in these 3 lines For example, what if want to get 30 questions and only practice the 7 times tables? You can change the code like this. You can access the program

Today I am sharing a game I have made in Scratch. It is called "Space Mission 1". You have to shoot asteroids and flying saucers. Asteroids give you 1 point and saucers give you 6 points.  Use "q" and "a" to move the spacecraft. Shoot with the "left" arrow You can access the game here https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/623206612 Enjoy!

Recently we got some borosilicate test tubes for chemistry projects. The problem with test tubes is that they have a round bottom and they cannot stand up. Instead of buying a stand for the test tubes we decided to design one and to print it in the 3D printer which is more fun. As you can see in the photo we some big and some small test tubes. We decided to make all holes big enough for the big ones to fit inside. I used calipers to measure the diameter of the large tubes We designed it with a height that allows us to easily pick both types of tubes from the top easily We added some rings to the bottom platform so that the tube didn't slip or fall down Before printing the whole thing we printed a small prototype of the holes with 2 different sizes because 3D prints can shrink a little when they cool down. This allowed us to discover that the size of the hole we had chosen wasn't big enough once it printed. So we could change the design before printing the full stand. For design

The inspiration for this project was a TV series called Battlebots. We saw 2 seasons on Netflix. It was about robots battling each other in an arena. My favorite robot was called Tombstone. This is the robot we built. It uses some Micro:bit components, some motors and Lego Technic pieces.  It is powered with a USB power bank. The chassis is made out of cardboard and the components are attached with zip ties and blue tag This project requires motors to move the robot and to move the blade at the front. As you can see in the photo we are using 1 Lego motor to move the Lego Technic that controls the blade and 2 non-Lego motors that move the robot. We also added a swivel castor wheel for support Making the robot we discovered that can't connect the motors directly to the pins on the Micro:bit because you can fry the Micro:bit. So you need to use a motor shield. There are many available but we are using this one from Dfrobot. It is called the Dfrobot Micro:bit expansion board. This one

Today I will tell you about another experiment we have done with plants. This one is about seeing the types of coloured chemicals the plant uses to catch energy from the sun. The main one is called chlorophyll and is the one that makes plants look green. But you will see it is not the only one. Chromatography is a way of separating different coloured chemicals by getting them to climb a piece of paper. Different chemicals climb at different speeds and you are able to see the lines or shades they create. Scientists call these chemicals: pigments. In our experiments we are using rubbing alcohol. In Australia you can find the brand "Isocol" in all supermarkets. All you need to do is to cut and squeeze a few leaves into a jar, add enough alcohol to cover the pieces and let it rest for a few hours. After a while, the alcohol gets the colours out of the leaves. The final step is to put a paper strip hanging in the middle. Make sure it doesn't touch the walls of the jar. Here yo

Last week I had the opportunity to use a real microscope. A friend of my Dad's has one and he showed it to us. One of the things we saw was the skeleton leaves that we talked about in the previous article. I think the photo was really cool This other photo is from the top side of a leave. You can see a white vein. You might be wondering what that little black line is? Yes, the one that looks like a closed eye. Well, that is a estoma. We saw in the previous article that estomas are used to breath in carbon dioxide and breath out oxygen. The majority of the estomas are on the bottom side of the leave. You can see them here more closely. These ones look like they are open.  Finally, we cut the stem of a leave hoping to see the xylem and the phloem. Our friend told us that the spiral you see in the photo is the Xylem. The plant uses the xylem to bring up water from the roots

You might be wondering what photosynthesis is ? Well I'm glad you asked. Photosynthesis is a process the plants use to make their food.  They take in H2O which is water and carbon dioxide or CO2 sunlight and with that they reproduce glucose and oxygen. The water comes up from on the roots through a tube called xylem and carbon dioxide goes in through the estomas in the leaf. The glucose they produce goes down another tube called the phloem to other parts of the plant and chuck out the oxygen through the estomas. I built the molecules with my new chemistry model kit. You can see photos of the full chemicals reaction below. The simplest carbohydrate which is basically a sugar. This is the basic building block for the plants and it is used to make everything from leaves, fruit, pulp and bark. For example the plan change of as many as thousands of glucose is to build cellulose. The cellulose is used to build the pulp of the trunk which is what we used to make paper. The following is a