Mechanically Generated Random Numbers in High School

• Autores: Mihály Hömöstrei, Dorottya Schnider, Balázs Norbert Nagy
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 61, Nº. 7, 2023, págs. 614-617
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In a computer-assisted world, data security is one of the most important issues, which seems to be interesting for organizers of physics competitions, too. An International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) problem1 from 2016—Invent Yourself—has motivated our school project in generating random numbers mechanically and in testing their randomness. Chaotic phenomena and random behavior can be found in the high school curriculum2 of certain countries (e.g., Austria), while textbooks of some other countries3 present the topic as supplementary material. For most high school students, the IYPT problem presented in this paper may be challenging, although there are some methods teachers and their students can rely on. This paper contains a description of an easy, experimental apparatus in chaos that generates random numbers in a manner that is easy for pupils to understand. Our setup is simple and easy to reproduce in schools. It randomly generates a sequence of zeros and ones, which can be interpreted as numbers in binary format—e.g., in computer science. The setup consists of a small ball and a non-circularly symmetric bowl in which chaotic motion can occur. More advanced experiments can be done using a camera and a horizontal shaker or a computer to both simulate the motion and test the randomness of the generated numbers. Our solution to the problem gives teachers the opportunity to conduct a complex and interesting high school project that is fun for students and teachers and provides solid knowledge of a field of physics.