Level 2Project 1 · Session 16
16

Project 1 · Your first real device

Show it

What we are making: nothing. Today your device is used by people who have never seen it.

Somebody who has never seen it has to use it, without you talking. Whether that happens at an exhibition evening or in a lesson with another class does not change anything you have to do.

On your table

1
Your device, powered and running before the first visitor
1
Your label: what it is, and what to do with it
1
Your notebook, open at your plan and your two readings
1
Somebody from your team, standing

The four questions

  1. What does it do? The sentence from session 13.
  2. How does it know? Name your sensor and your threshold.
  3. Why that number? Because you measured it. Say both readings.
  4. What went wrong? Answer honestly. The team that says ‘nothing’ is the team nobody believes.
💡 Tip
Let visitors set it off themselves. Hand them the thing that triggers it — the ruler, the torch, their own hand. A device somebody else can make work is worth far more than a demonstration.

Afterwards

  • Everything back in the tray, checked against the bin card.
  • One paragraph in your notebook: what you would build in May, now that you know how.
  • Note which part of this took longest. In May you will plan around it.

What you learned

  • Sense, decide, act — you have now built one of your own.
  • A threshold is a choice you make from measurements, and you can defend yours.
  • Building in halves finds a fault in minutes rather than a session.
  • In May you choose the problem as well as the solution.
Challenge optional — only if you finish early
  • Out of twenty tries, how many worked? Write the number down and say it out loud.
15. Test it and fix it