YEARS K–6 IDEAS FOR THE CLASSROOM
Further investigations by the Capstone Kids (continued)
The Senior Project
position to ensure consistent measuring. They restarted the app
between each activity, and had to consider and adjust the speed
The group’s senior project was about how to use colour in
displaying the direction and degree of movement in activities.
To achieve this they used an Android app called APIAR. This is
a phone app that measures colours, movement and sound, can
encrypt text messages, and store the results in either a mosaic
tile image, or as a csv file. The app is free for 10 days, and then
costs less than $1 after that if you want to buy it, or you can
delete and reinstall the app to use another 10 days again free.
Both Ryley and Grace took recordings using the APIAR app, and
then operated some Python code to make the image files. One
advantage of these image files is that you can immediately see if
there are any changes between one sensor reading and the next.
The app can be used in sport or leisure activities, and can be
adjusted during the time between sensor readings. The app has
been used in horse riding, cricket, tennis, cycling, golf, rowing,
running, and on a trampoline.
/ timing between each sensor observation. One of the first results
from their investigations was to map which colour represented
which direction of the phone. They soon found that the starting
position of the phone influenced what colour represented which
direction:
The rotations / movements of the phone were:
Red = forwards and backwards
Green = left to right
Blue = up and down
Ryley and Grace undertook several different activities, but in this
article we only display tennis, cricket, horse riding, and pushbike
riding, the idea being that they wanted to compare and contrast
similar activities, which had different directional movements.
While tennis uses mainly a side-to-side movement, cricket has
mainly an up and down movement. Horse riding is a more bumpy
movement, while bike riding has a smoother movement.
Figure 3 Which colour represents each direction.
Ryley and Grace then went out and undertook a number of
The first experiment was to better understand the settings and
results from using the phone app. They ran a number of tests in
a controlled environment / activities to establish exactly how to
use the app, what were the best settings for the specific type of
activity, and how to interpret the results. With each activity Ryley
and Grace had to start the phone app recording in the same
Tennis
observations, both as individuals and as a team. The following
results are an example of their observations in graphical form.
Cricket
Horseriding
Figure 4 Some of the colour mosaics produced
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Pushbike