Teaching non-linear dynamics through educational kits: Demo of memristor circuit kit

Abstract

Summary form only given. Education has been rated by Nobel laureate Prof. R. E. Smalley as one of the top ten challenges to be faced by humanity in the next 50 years. Many attempts have been made by several researchers and policy makers to address the issue of effective education. T. Grotzer from Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) emphasized that the teachers, along with teaching scientific skills, encourage students to locate opportunities and apply those skills at appropriate situations. Similarly, Nobel laureate Prof. Carl Wieman proposed the use of scientific approach to science learning. He has argued in that understanding of the concepts as well as retention by students is much more effective if a student is involved with the class rather than being a passive listener. He also recommended the use of educational circuit kits to have a better impact on the students. After the recent discovery of memristor, many researchers including Prof. Leon Chua and Dr. Stan Williams recommended the need of introducing memristor to high school students. A similar argument was made in, where the authors recommended introducing chaos theory to high school students. The present demo aims to introduce the researchers and teachers with plug and play circuit kit of memristor. The memristor kit can greatly help students of nano-technology involved in understanding this recently discovered device. In fact, Valparaiso community schools recently started a program to introduce nano technology, including memristor, to talented elementary school children. The present memristor kit can be highly beneficial to such initiatives. At 2nd Memristor and Memristive Systems Symposium (CNNA 2010), the present demo would attempts to attract the attention of both high school science teachers to understand the use of such kits for their students as well as researcher active in the field of memristor based designs.