Raspberry Pi is a great tool for teaching. Its affordable price makes it appealing for students and teachers that can make interesting “experiments” without spending a fortune.
The understanding of optics requires lot of geometry, but equations are deeply understood only by a small number of students. Drawings may help, but making them requires some ability and precision. Needless to say, in most cases, the result is static and, in order to understand what happens in different conditions, require to realise many drawings.
A very interesting alternative is using an application called GeoGebra that can be downloaded for free from the Internet. Interesting enough, GeoGebra runs on Raspberry Pi. Every student, then, can do his/her own experiment with optics using GeoGebra. See this post to learn how to install it (quite simple, in fact; the only tricky part being installing the Java virtual machine). In short, download the arm version of the Java VM from http://jdk8.java.net/fxarmpreview/index.html, then issue the following commands in a terminal
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!