Computer Science
In our rapidly changing world, technology plays a huge role in our everyday lives. Technology is a very general description of machines and algorithms that perform and complete certain tasks. A large group of these machines have computers. Computers help us organize these algorithms and programs. They can be observed everywhere, from your school or home computer to giant trans-continental airplanes! The big idea is that computers are a big part of our lives, and will only become more advanced and popular with time. That being said, computer science, the study of computers is a very important subject because it can help us better understand computers and solve technical issues we face when using them every day. My dad taught me computer science this year using his vast computer knowledge. My lessons were based on the book Python For Kids by Jason R. Briggs, which introduced the topic of computer science in a clear and step-by-step way. We focused on learning the basic topic of algorithms. Below are a few projects that summarize what I learned:
Designing A Sorting Algorithm
In this activity, I learned how to design a simple algorithm. For our input and output, we used wooden sticks, for convenience. This activity took up a few lessons, as I made four versions of the algorithm before I was able to code it in the Python programming language, with the help of Visual Studio. My final version includes a screen capture of my code.
Circle Circumference
This assignment required me to write a Python program to calculate the circumference of circles with different radiuses. The two-part instructions for this assignment are pasted below:
Write a program in Python that calculates and prints out the circumferences of circles with radiuses between 1cm and 100cm with 1cm increments, e.g. 1cm, 2cm, 3cm, ..., 100cm.
2. Similar to the previous program, but only for circles with radiuses between 2cm and 100cm with 2cm increments, e.g. 2cm, 4cm, 6cm, ..., 100cm.
Spreadsheets Practice
A simple activity in Spreadsheets introduced me to the practical program for organizing data and calculating sums of large numbers. The activity was based on investment rate and the instructions are pasted below:
Mary has $100. She invests all of it with a 3% annual return. At the end of the year, all interest she earned is automatically re-invested. Construct a spreadsheet showing how much money she has at the end of each year during the first 10 years since her investment.
2. Use the spreadsheet to find out in which of the following scenarios Mary will end up with the most money at the end of year 10:
(a) $100 invested at 3%
(b) $150 invested at 2.5%
(c) $80 invested at 5%
Final Project
My final project was by far my favorite because it combined two of my big passions - nature and ecosystems, with research, computer science, and organizing data in spreadsheets. This activity required me to find a reliable source for my data. I also got to learn how to create scatter charts and set up a professional spreadsheet that's easy to understand.
Together with my dad, I came up with the idea of comparing average (yearly) rainfall, to the number of species in the countries we visited this year. I found the data surprising and would perhaps like to look further into this topic in the future.