USING A COMPUTER MOUSE AS A MEASUREMENT DEVICE IN THE SCIENCE LABORATORY

RESEARCHERS ARE DETERMINING THE FEASIBILITY OF USING A STANDARD COMPUTER MOUSE AS A POSITION TRANSDUCER FOR PHYSICAL SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS. THIS NOVEL USE OF A MOUSE PROVIDES A LOW-COST MEASURING DEVICE THAT IS EASY FOR TEACHERS OR STUDENTS TO INSTALL, USE, AND MODIFY FOR THEIR INDIVIDUAL EXPERIMENTS. SINCE THE MOUSE INTERFACE IS BUILT INTO ALL COMPUTERS, THE CONCEPT IS NOT RESTRICTED TO A SPECIFIC COMPUTER MODEL. THE RESEARCH PROVIDES THE SCIENCE STUDENT WITH AN INEXPENSIVE, EASY-TO-USE DEVICE THAT WILL MEASURE THE POSITION, VELOCITY, OR ACCELERATION OF AN OBJECT AT A TYPICAL COMPUTER STATION IN A SCIENCE LABORATORY; DEVELOPS A PRELIMINARY RESOURCE GUIDE THAT ENABLES SCIENCE TEACHERS TO DEVELOP THEIR OWN EXPERIMENTS OR PROVIDE THE NECESSARY INFORMATION SO THAT STUDENTS CAN DESIGN THEIR OWN EXPERIMENTS; AND DETERMINES THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE CONCEPT AND EVALUATES STUDENT AND TEACHER RESPONSES TO THE DEVICE BY TESTING SEVERAL KINEMATICS EXPERIMENTS IN JUNIOR HIGH, HIGH SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE SCIENCE CLASSES.