Security technology ranges from the everyday to high-tech spy gadgets. These technologies help keep us safe and secure, but what are the tradeoffs? Explore this question and others as you delve into the secrets of security technology!
Activities for this unit include:
- Secret Code Machine:
Use our special decoder ring to read a secret message, and then write your own secret message to your friends!
- Open and Shut: Different locks have different strengths and weaknesses. Can you figure out how to open our giant key and combination locks?
- Metal Detector: Examine the inner workings of a metal detector. You may be surprised to learn what it can find, and what it can't!
- Childproof / Adultproof: See if you can open our ultimate childproof cabinet, and experiment with several "childproof" medicine bottles.
- Surveillance Cameras: Observe people in the museum on monitors in the lab. How many cameras see you every day?
- Fingerprinting: Make art with your fingers! Record your fingerprints, and then compare them with other people's fingerprints.
Explore security technology online.
Explore computers and robots, from the oldest mechanical calculation machines to current efforts to make robots act more like people.
Practice your surgery skills, decide where you stand in the debate over genetic engineering, and much more as you examine the technologies we use on our own bodies and on other living things.
Investigate the technologies we use to share our ideas with other people in our lab unit on communications technology.
We use all sorts of technologies in our homes every day, sometimes without even realizing it! With this lab unit, you'll look more closely at some of the fascinating technology all around us.
