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�鶹Լ�� Teach > Secondary Resources > KS3 Computing / GCSE Computing > The Royal Institute Christmas Lectures 2014

Professor Danielle George demonstrates the world’s fastest puzzle cube solver and explains how it works using just a smartphone and bricks.

The smartphone takes photographs of the cube using its built-in camera and the software works out the fastest way to solve the cube.

The smartphone then sends instructions to the mechanical arms to tell them which parts of the cube to rotate.

The puzzle cube solver is a prime example of how electronics in our everyday lives are capable of doing unexpected things.

This clip is from The Royal Institute Christmas Lectures 2014.

Teacher Notes

Key Stage 3

Introduction – Discuss how colour is represented in a computer system as a combination of Red-Green-Blue binary numbers and how a photograph from a digital camera is simply an array of pixels with the RGB data stored as a binary number.

Video questions for pupils:
1. Is there an industrial / scientific / practical use for a system like that which solves a puzzle cube (give at least two examples)?2. Considering that the system in the video solved the puzzle cube in just over four seconds, what else can a computer program do so much faster than a human (give at least two examples)?
3. Are there any tasks where a human can solve a problem faster than a computer (give at least two examples)?

Activities:
Consider that the program solves the puzzle cube using a set of programmed procedures simply combined to complete the task. Pupils should be challenged to re-arrange these procedures into the correct sequence to perform a few tasks.

Each procedure can be used more than once or not at all and further instructions need to be added inside the brackets:
1. Drop / Place (…)
2. Pick up (…)
3. Move to (…)
4. Throw (…)
5. Eat (…)
6. Slide (…)
7. Apply (…)
8. Print (…)
9. Activate (…)
10. Speak (…)

The tasks are as follows:

• You are working in an online shopping warehouse and your job is to put some headphones into a cardboard parcel, sealing it with tape and dropping it onto a conveyor belt after the box has been labelled from a printer.
• You are preparing a sandwich with two slices of bread, butter, cheese, tomato and lettuce, which will be served on a plate.
• You are a referee for your local sports team and a player has just committed a foul resulting in a warning where a yellow card needs showing and you need to warn the player.

The teacher can interact with their class, giving analogies with how modular programs can mean a team of programmers can each work on a separate procedure as long as they follow a standard set of rules.

Key Stage 4

Additional material:
Pupils will be given the program for an array for a chess board and each pupil will be responsible to write the code needed to move one chess piece and interact with the array.

chess_board=
| A   | B   | C   | D   | E   | F   | G   | H   | I   |
| 1 | bc | bk | bb | bk | bq | bb | bk | bc |
| 2 | bp | bp | bp | bp | bp | bp | bp | bp |
| 3 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| 4 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| 5 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| 6 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| 7 | wp | wp | wp | wp | wp | wp | wp | wp |
| 8 | wc | wk | wb | wq | wk | wb | wk | wc |

• More advanced programmers can add to this by having the pieces interact with one another (such as the knight being able to jump over other pieces or that the pawn can only move forwards or diagonal one place when taking another)
• Less advanced programmers can concentrate on the moves.

Curriculum Notes

These clips will be relevant for teaching Computing, ICT and Computer Science at KS3 and GCSE/KS4 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and 2nd Level and National 4/5 in Scotland.

The topics discussed will support OCR, Edexcel, AQA,WJEC GCSE in GCSE in England and Wales, CCEA GCSE in Northern Ireland and SQA National 4/5 in Scotland.

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