From ALD16

Grace Hopper Colouring In

Our Ada Lovelace colouring in illustration released for Ada Lovelace Day 2015 was so popular that we thought we should follow it up for Ada Lovelace Day 2016 with a new one on in the series. This year saw us launch a new University media service – Media Hopper – named for Rear Admiral Grace Hopper and so we thought it appropriate to feature her. Grace Hopper is famous as the inventor of COBOL and often credited with making the term ‘debugging’ more popular after the removal of an actual bug (moth) from a Harvard Mark II computer. Download, print and go wild with your colouring pens!

grace_geometric_a3.pdf

 

Musical micro:bits

Activity A – ‘Musical Pencil’

Graphite (the drawing bit of a pencil) conducts electricity but has quite high resistance, so can be used to make a simple variable resistor. Resistance is affected by weight, thickness and length of line. We measure this change in resistance as a number and use this number to control the pitch of a tone played.

bananas

Activity B – ‘Banana Keyboard’

In this project, you will build your own music player BBC micro:bit banana keyboard from household fruit. Learn how to convert your BBC micro:bit into a music player using pins P0 and GND, earphones (or speakers), as well as crocodile clips (or spring clips). The connect fruit using pins P1 and GND.

Further Reading

Booking for is now open

Booking for Ada Lovelace Day 2016 is now live – please feel free to pass on details to people you feel maybe interested in coming along.

ada_lovelace_in_1852
Ada Lovelace, “The Enchantress of Numbers”, in 1852.

On Tuesday 11th October 2016, in Room 1.12 of the University Main Library, we will again be running a Wikipedia edit-a-thon to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day 2016, an international celebration day of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

Beginning at 10am with a range of guest speakers in the morning, this will be followed by fun technology activities from 11am to 1pm (Metadata games, BBC Microbit, Sonic Pi, Lego calculators/adders).

Full Wikipedia editing training will be given at 1-2pm. Thereafter the afternoon’s editathon from 2-5pm will focus on improving the quality of Wikipedia articles related to Women in STEM!

The event page can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/2cGapkn

For booking purposes, the day is split in two parts: talks & technology activities in the morning and the Women in STEM Wikipedia editathon in the afternoon.

You can attend both morning and afternoon sessions or just one.

Time for lunch? The fun technology activities from 11am to 1pm can be dropped in and out of and there is the Library Cafe downstairs where you can get refreshments and a bite to eat.

Not a student or staff member of the university? You can book tickets through Eventbrite.

Suggestions for notable Women in STEM who could & should be represented on Wikipedia?

Feel free to suggest name of notable women we could include as part of this day of celebration. Email me at ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk

Hope to see you there!