Current Digital Explorations Projects

In this application, students will create animations and buttons in Adobe Flash Professional to build a game of sorts. The purpose of this application is to introduce the concept of integration, which is an important foundation of calculus. This application also demonstrates the many functions of ActionScript and Adobe Flash Professional. The lab will allow for students with any level of experience, or even lack thereof, with the coding language ActionScript to be able to create this teaching instrument. This lab requires no background knowledge, and the goal is to demonstrate one of the many applications of calculus. While sometimes calculus may seem like it serves no purpose other than to infuriate students, it is an essential building block that engineers must use on a daily basis.

Boarder Jump

by Eric Phaneuf

My project is a simple application that deals with the physics of projectile motion. In the boarder jump app, users are given the equation for distance traveled by a projectile with a given angle and initial velocity. From there the user needs to figure out what initial velocity the boarder must hit the jump, which as a set angle, at to clear the given distance. This application can be modified to also include variable height of the ramp, initial y value, variable distance to the target, final x value, as well as making the ramp have a variable angle. As the app utilizes more variables, it forces the user to become more and more comfortable with the physics that is going on in able to solve for the given situation. You could also get a lot out of making this application, because it uses many important aspects of flash programming. In order to create this app you would need to utilize different class concepts, as well as coding outside of the main timeline. Much of the code used in this lab is fairly complex, so for a beginner to flash just coping the code would be the best idea, but the general doings of Adobe Flash can still be learned through this process. Overall it is a straightforward, fairly simple app, that can be a lot of fun, and a good learning experience, to both use and create.

Bouncing Ball

by Troy Owens

This lab allows you to build a flash program that simulates several balls bouncing around the screen and off each other. We will explore the uses of associated classes and hit detection in flash to build this program. We will build a new class which will move the ball all on its own, so the actual program does not have to do much except call the class.

Amateur Biologist

by Alex Blair

My project is an application geared towards practicing anatomy titled Amature Biologist. The misspelling in the title is meant to be cute, but can easily be changed. The application features a drag-and-drop function to create a puzzle out of the bones in the hand. Participants drag hand bones and place them in the proper location on the hand and the bone locks into place. For added fun there is a clearly visible timer with time-based rankings on the side. This way, the participant can time themselves on finishing the puzzle and compete with themselves or others for the best rank or time. The rank box changes with time as well so the participant can see the rank they will receive should they finish the puzzle. The application timer can be started by selecting and dragging a piece or by clicking the start button. As an icing on the cake, the title is animated and can easily be refined into something much more exciting by an editor of his program.

Calculated Skiing

by Federico Paredes

This project is all about showing how different sinusoidal and cosine functions behave. With varying amplitudes and periods, each function is plotted out by the skier. Each time a function is clicked, the skier shows how that function looks like and a graph with labeled points is shown to demonstrate where the amplitude is and where the halfway marks of the function are. To be able to achieve this, first the skier was made, and then for each function the skier was imported and made to have different animations according to the parameters of the function. Since this project was made to be instructive while also entertaining, it does have limited interactive portions but it does help to clarify certain aspects of calculus and graphs. It also shows how the graph itself does not need to have numbers, but can also be labeled with symbols such as pi. Finally, this project, Calculated Skiing, has its major focus on sine and cosine functions. To show the differences, three functions are slightly different from each other to be able to see what numbers are affecting what part of the graph, such as amplitude change and period change. The skier resets itself after each run, although cosine and sine functions do not stop with respect to time.

Action Potential

by Kaity Hauge

This visualization depicts the interactions of calcium and sodium ions within a neural pathway.