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| Aireanna | Chris | Emma |
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| Hannah | Jenny | Jillian |  |
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| Olivia | Rina | Stephanie |
Logical Problem-Solving with Peanut Butter & Jelly
The girls learned about the difficulty of writing complete instructions, much like a computer program, by writing instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They were divided into 3 groups, wrote the instructions, then switched instructions and assembled the sandwiches according to another team's interpretation of the instructions. Here are some photos from the event:
What's inside the computer?
The girls had their first opportunity to tear down a computer, see
what was inside, and learn about all the internal parts. They divided
into to different groups, one to tear down a Dell computer, and one
group to dismantle a Sun Ultra 5. They could compare the two
computers to see similarities and differences between the two. They
also were impressed by how many different vendors make the parts for
the internal workings of a computer and how many people this must
employ around the world. They found schematics from searching on the
web, and spent time investigating the function of individual parts
on the web. Here are some of the pictures as they attacked the
machines!
Breaking Down Stereotypes
The girls drew pictures and wrote personality characteristics of typical computer scientists and then shared their drawings with each other. In this group of young women, many had strong role models in their lives and their drawings reflected that. Here is Hannah with her computer scientist.
Virtual Reality Lab
We went to the virtual reality lab, and learned about visual perception. In that lab, they study the human brain using the vision system. The focus is on learning, perception, memory and problem solving in their experiments. They are also using the virtual world to retrain vision after a person has a stroke or brain injury. Everyone got to participate in some virtual reality or eye-tracking demonstrations. The students met Kelly Chajka, the lab assistant and Jelena Jovancevic, a graduate student from Brain & Cognitive Science. Both Kelly and Jelena discussed their work, and their academic pursuits that helped them arrive at studying perception in the world of virtual reality. Here are some pictures from Thursday:
