This week’s episode has a lot of fun! First, we’ve got a visit to the Indiana Science Olympiad robotic arm competition. Kids in the competition had to design and build real remote controlled robots to perform specific tasks – like grabbing batteries or nails and dropping them into the right buckets. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, as you’ll find out watching this segment!
You’ll also go on a Friday Zone Field Trip to the Big Red II supercomputer at Indiana University. It’s one of the biggest and fastest computers in the whole world! Researchers at the university use it to make complicated calculations, analyze data, and even make complex predictions.
Our guest on the show gives a simple computing lesson to a group of Girl Scouts using an example of programming a happy or sad face. Computer programming can be incredibly complicated, but code is really just a set of instructions the computer follows.