Use Simple Pasco Experiments to Stimulate Computational Thinking

Computational thinking (CT) skills are crucial for solving problems in work and life, yet not all students naturally possess many CT skills. A way to help students grow CT skills is in-depth data analysis during introductory physics lab classes taken by most STEM students. In these lab classes at our school, we have been using Pasco probes and probeware for many years. In this talk, we show how differently Pasco calculates velocity from position data collected by Pasco PhotoGate and Motion Sensor, respectively, how Pasco has improved their data presentation when upgrading their software from DataStudio to CapStone, and also places Pasco can improve. Rather than accepting automatic fitting results provided by the software, we can dig into the numbers and investigate data inner workings to improve CT skills.