Unpacked Content
Scientific and Engineering Practices
Developing and Using Models
Crosscutting Concepts
Patterns
Knowledge
Students know:
- About digitized information transfer. (e.g., information can be converted from a sound wave into digital signals such as patterns of 1s and 0s and vice versa; visual or verbal messages can be encoded in patterns of flashes of light to be decoded by someone else across the room).
- Ways that high-tech devices convert and transmit information. (e.g., cell phones convert sound waves into digital signals, so they can be transmitted long distances, and then converted back into sound waves; a picture or message can be encoded using light signals to transmit the information over a long distance).
- Information can be transmitted over long distances without significant degradation. High tech devices, such as computers or cell phones, can receive and decode information - convert form to voice - and vice versa.
Skills
Students are able to:
- Generate multiple design solutions that use patterns to transmit a given piece of information.
- Apply the engineering design process to develop a model to show multiple solutions to transfer information.
- Describe the given criteria for the design solutions.
- Describe the given constraints of the design solutions, including the distance over which information is transmitted, safety considerations, and materials available.
Understanding
Students understand that:
- Similarities and differences in the types of patterns used in the solutions to determine whether some ways of transmitting information are more effective than others and addressing the problem.
Vocabulary
- transmit
- transfer
- decoded
- accuracy
- digitized
- convert
- coded
- signals
