Pocket Lab (Jake Dickerman)

Author

Jake Dickerman - Grant College Prep and Digital Arts Magnet

Sensor / Probe

The pocket lab is a small box that contains a wide suite of devices, from accelerometer to magnetic field sensor, to both barometric and altitudinal pressure.

The pocket lab comes with an app for both iOS and Android devices that allows you to make graphs against time of up to three separate sensors at once.

Sample Investigation

I used the pocket lab to gather data on how pressure, volume, and amount of gas related to each other. I set up three separate small-scale demonstrations.

First, I put the pocket lab underneath a solo cup and pushed on the cup. This allowed students to see that as volume decreased, pressure increased.

Second, I heated up a container in the microwave, cleaned out any sort of fluid, put the sensor inside of the container, sealed the container, and put the container into the freezer. This allowed students to see an example of Gay-Lussac's law.

Finally, I put the pocket lab into a balloon and blew up the balloon. There were a variety of interesting effects that I observed. A sudden spike in pressure, followed by the pressure inside the balloon ending at a new higher place.

Sample Data & Analysis and Interpretation

I used the pocket lab alongside a strong neodymium magnet. Interestingly, you can see here that the total field strength is equal in all locations to the sum of all the other magnitudes.

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