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Log #11: The making of our video

A project log for Hacker Calculus

Isaac Newton was a hacker. Let's take calculus back to its roots and make it accessible to everyone.

joan-horvathJoan Horvath 08/30/2017 at 04:400 Comments

We pulled together a few fun bits of video to make a prize video. It's posted in "Details,"  in the appropriate submission spot, and on YouTube of course, but we wanted to point out a few features.

One of the fun things we realized was that our Log #1 accelerometer would turn green (show zero acceleration in x and y) if it was falling freely. We didn't want to drop our creation very far which meant that we needed a fast video. It turned out that an iPhone 6s in "slo mo" was perfectly fine for capturing the effect. (We dropped it just a few feet into a very big soft pillow - we don't recommend doing anything more drastic than that to your poor Circuit Playground and battery.) 

We also felt validated that the objects really do make more sense when we can move them around and talk about them. We hope a lot of readers will make their own, which is even better than watching a video!

One other note: the 3D printed piece showing x^3 versus x^2 curve (derivative and integral) has the two curves scaled differently from each other to make the shape of both curves clear. Scaling for these curves and avoiding unprintable pointy or very thin parts is proving to be tough! Another research area for us! 

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