Hands-on experience powers physics lab

For the final project in Dr. Mariel Meier’s Fundamentals of Electronics course, students were tasked with building an electronic that interacts with or responds to environmental elements, such as wind, sound or other electronic transmissions.

The projects were a study in Arduino microcontrollers, an open-source electronic prototyping platform, which students used to control their interactive electronics via coding and other electronics.

While project scope varied between students, each included the knowledge base that comes with the Dual Degree Engineering and Physics programs at Oglethorpe.

Students who presented electronics projects included:

• Stephen Myers: LED Audio Visualizer
• Maurice Parker: LED Matrix Game: Find the Gold
• Michael Paszek: Nixie Tube Clock
• Iris Ponce: Morse Code Decoder
• Emily Toomer: How’d That Happen: A Magnetic Pendulum
• Cesar Torres: Arduino Simple Calculator
• Jamal Willis: Follow Me Drone

Looking ahead, updated lab facilities in the Cousins Center for Science and Innovation will only allow the programs and students’ opportunities to grow.

Emily Toomer explains her wind-triggered pendulum.