What is your definition of information?
If I have information that you need, how would you get that information from me?
Give me a question that has two possible answers.
For this activity, get into groups of 2.
It's the first day of school, and you finally have a class with your best friend.
There's one question you always ask your friend the first time you see them after summer. You are excited to complete your annual ritual of asking the same question.
But your notoriously strict Computer Science teacher seats you on opposite sides of the room and won't let you talk.
You need the answer, but you can't talk!
Step 1: With your partner, decide on a question with two possible answers.
Step 2: Using the supplies provided or anything you have on hand, build a device that will communicate the answers to your question.
Step 1: Change your question so that there are now four possible answers.
Step 2: Update your device to communicate any of the four possible answers.
Consider:
Step 1: Change your question so that there are now eight possible answers.
Step 2: Update your device to communicate any of the eight possible answers.
Consider:
This time, you don't need to build or modify your device.
Discuss with your partner: How you would modify your device to communicate ANY NUMBER of possible answers.
No device in hand this round: just walk us through how it would work.
Could we keep increasing the number of messages forever? Could our devices be used for questions with 16, 32, or 1,000,000 possible responses?
Some things to think about:
Think back to your simple two-answer device. Could you use it differently instead of modifying it?
Discuss as a class: how could that simple two-state device send complex messages, clearly enough that another group could pick it up and use it the same way?