Description: For this final project we had to find Ms.Tran's missing cow. It was a group project where we had to use Caesar Cipher to decode the messages. Each hint we completed, we were rewarded with another clue until we went to the final clue which was very hard. At first we only needed a one digit cipher but then we eventually needed the 10 digit one for the final clue.
Procedure: First we watched a video on the Caesar Cipher. Then we made a code that was a simple Caesar cipher code with the for loop. Then we were given a brief project description and informed that the first group to finish was going to receive a prize. So first we were given a clue that was encrypted by 1 key. So we solved that and then went on to two until eventually we got to clue five.
Clue 1: After seeing the hoof prints on the football feild, Ms. Tran knows that her cow has gone missing! She is panicking! Can you help get the cow back?
Derived: The cow must be near the football field still then. It could not have gone far.
Clue 2: Max said that after he was dropped off this morning, he saw the cow with some JH kids eating mint candy near the Cue Quad.
Derived: The cow must have gone to Ms.Sanchez's office to get a mint then went back down to the JH quad.
Clue 3: Someone mentioned seeing Ms. King fill the bowl with mint candies this morning.
Derived: this must mean that the cow had to have gone by the office earlier this morning
Clue 4: A student found a mint wrapper near the snack shack with a scribbled note: call me at 650806
Derived: this must mean that the cow was walking by the snack shack at some point
Clue 5: No one stole the cow. It walked to Ms.Sanchez's office to get candy, then hung out with the JH kids.
Derived: this is the answer and the cow just wanted to get some candy, did not get stolen
Solution: For the clues 1-4 Anavi and I used the basic Caesar Cipher to find out the key and answers. This method worked very well for the first four. It was the basic code we built in class and we figured out all of the hints about where the cow had went. Then once we got to the fifth one we noticed that it did not work with just one number key. We realized that we had to use the 10 digit cipher we had made. The tricky part was finding the 10 digit code. The phone number that was written on the mint wrapper was the first 6 digit of the code but then that left us 9999 other possibilities for the final four digits. We tested out all of them for a while until we realized that the single keys could work for the last four. We gathered the first four codes and along with their answers to the keys. Then we combined them and they wrote out 9789. Then we added it onto the end of the phone number to create: 6508069789. We inputted this in and it worked. This last part took use a lot of time but eventually we figured it out after we fixed our codes.
SOUL reflection:
-S -what worked for us was inputting the code and finding the sentence out of the long list of codes
-O -what didn't work for us was that our codes didn't work at first. We had to figure out the problems with our code and it didn't work for a while.
-U -I learned how to use Caesar Cipher and how to make a long list of strings in order to decrypt and encrypt a code.
-L -what prevented me from having a successful project was the fact that our codes weren't exactly working and it was hard to do it without a code.
WISCR - I was an insightful and critical thinker when I was coming up with solutions to fix the code. Additionally I was a well rounded individual when I was helping my partner by fixing eachothers codes.