Team: 53
School: La Cueva High
Area of Science: Computer Science
Interim: About/Problem Definition:
Sometimes, students have a hard time understanding math and art concepts when taught the traditional way. Processing is a graphic language based on Java, and it is great for showing patterns, visual graphics, computer art, math, and more! The goal of the project is to make a program with Processing that can effectively visualize art and math concepts and then show it to people learning the concepts and ask them what they learned. A lot of students learn better visually, and might grasp concepts better if they are shown images moving and rotating, as well as patterns!
Progress/Plan:
I’ve been using Processing to draw a unit circle, art such as fractals, and math such as using tan, sin, and cos to plot the position of rectangles/circles to make patterns. I’m done with the unit circle, but it has to have more animation and look better for the art aspect. I once saw an animated unit circle, and it had a triangle rotating and it showed how values at certain points corresponded with the angle and side length made by the triangle. I want to make something similar with Processing. Processing uses the draw() function 60 times every second and, for example, by changing the radius of a circle by mapping the mouse position to the radius, and not redrawing the background, cool spider web/ tree trunk patterns can be created. I’ve also been working on rasterizing images and making grids with them, and then looking at areas that are brightest and darkest, and then filling them with different shades and sizes of different colors. If an image is turned black and white, and the shades of black and white have different sizes of filled circles, the image can still be recognized! The more the image is divided, the more clear the image becomes. If circles start at the center of an image, rotate, and scale down, cool patterns can be created. There are lots of very interesting things that can be done with Processing! I also want to try to model some clouds. Jupiter has amazing clouds, and from photos, the clouds look 2D. If certain shapes are stretched out and filled with gradient-changing colors, I think a similar effect can be made. Once the unit circle and math/art concepts are done, I want to show them to students, and make a poll to see if they learned anything, and how effective they thought it was.
Expected Results:
After some of the core parts are done, such as the Unit Circle and tan sin cos patterns, and for the art side fractals, more can be added to make it interesting and for it to have different ideas. I can add different areas of not well-known but interesting math so that anyone, not just someone in school, might learn something.
Team Members:
Sponsoring Teacher: Yolanda Lozano