A brief water excursion: introducing computer organization students to a water driven 1-bit half-adder

ABSTRACT

This paper describes our experiences in incorporating a brief discussion of simple computations powered by water into the standard Computer Organization course. We describe our goals in introducing this concept to students, our methods for doing so, and our subsequent experiences in building a working 1-bit half-adder powered by water. We also describe a set of videos and Flash animations that can be used by others who wish to quickly demonstrate water based computations to their students via the world wide web.

REFERENCES

• 1: Angrist, Stanley. Fluid Control Devices, Scientific American, Dec. 1964, Vol. 211, No. 6, pp 80--88.
• 2: Aron, T. Story of the Water Adder, Bowdoin College Web, www.bowdoin.edu/~garnick/gallery/wateradder/tim.html
• 3: Berque, D. Serlin, I. Water Adder Home, DePauw University Web Site, http://people.depauw.edu/dberque/wa.
• 4: Blikstein, P. Programmable Water, MIT Media Lab Web Site (Future of Learning Group), http://web.media.mit.edu/~paulo/courses/howmake/mlfabfinalproject.htm
• 5: Dewdney A. K. Computer Recreations: Analog gadgets that solve a diversity of problems and raise and array of questions, Scientific American, June 1985, pp 18--29.
• 6: Harms D., and Berque D. Smaller and faster is not always better: using old hardware to teach content and history to computer science students, Journal of the Association for History and Computing, Vol. IV., No. 3, November, 2001. An on-line journal available at http://mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCiv3/ARTICLES/harms/harms.html
• 7: Douglas Harms , Dave Berque, Using a PDP-11/10 to teach content and history in computer organization courses, Proceedings of the thirty-second SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer Science Education, p.209-213, February 2001, Charlotte, North Carolina, United States
• 8: Hollingsworth J. Improving Instruction with Toys in the Computer Science Classroom, Proceedings of the 2003 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Reno, Nevada, February 19--22, 2003.
• 9: Klassner, F. A Case Study of LEGO Mindstorms#8482; Suitability for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Courses at the College Level.
• 10: Strong, C. L. The Amateur Scientist: A rain gauge, a fluid flip-flop, a sundial and a way of seeing crystals as they grow, Scientific American, May 1966, Vol 214, No. 5, pp. 128--130.

INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
computer organization pedagogy, water-based computing