Lesson Plan Alan Turing

Lesson Plan Alan Turing Plaque marking Alan Turing's former home in Wilmslow, Cheshire Grade Level(s): 9-12 Subject(s): Physics, History, Computation In-Class Time: 60 min Prep Time: 10 min Materials • Either computers or printed copies of the CIA’s cypher games • Prize for the winner of the Code War Game • Discussion Sheets Objective In this lesson students will learn about the life and legacy of Alan Turing, father of the modern-day computer. Introduction Alan Turing was born on June 23,1912 in Paddington, London. At age 13, he attended boarding school at Sherbon School. Here he excelled in math and science. He paid little attention to liberal arts classes to the frustration of his teachers. After Sherbon, Turing went on to study at King’s College in Cambridge. Here Turing produced an elegant solution to the Entscheidungsproblem (Decision problem) for universal machines. At this time, Alonzo Church also published a paper solving the problem, which led to their collaboration and the development of the Church-Turing Thesis, and the idea of Turing machines, which by theory can compute anything that is computable. Prepared by the Center for the History of Physics at AIP 1 During WWII Turing worked as a cryptanalysist breaking cyphers for the Allies at Blectchy Park. It was here that Turing built his “Bombe”, a machine that could quickly break any German cipher by running through hundreds of options per second. Turing’s machine and team were so quick at breaking these codes the German army was convinced they had a British spy in their ranks. Turing was also responsible for breaking the infamous naval Enigma code, which was used by Germany. Turing went to the United States in 1942 to continue his work in cryptoanalysis and build another bombe machine. He then developed the Turingery technique to use against more complex ciphers. It was a tele printer rotor cipher attachment named TUNNY and lead to the world first digital programmable computer. The information Turing helped the Allies find was imperative in winning the war. After the war Turing continued working on the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) with the goal of being able to create artificial intelligence so complex it could trick a human into thinking it itself was a human. This test is now known as the Turing test. After this Turing became interested in the pervasiveness of the Fibonacci sequence in nature and published work on it. An important part of Turing’s life was how open for his time he was about his homosexuality. For a man with his upper middle-class upbringing and his very public position in the scientific community it was unthinkable to discuss. Yet Turing felt no need to conceal this part of himself from the people closest to him. Alan Turing met his closest friend and someone he described as his first love, Christopher Morcom, during their time at Sherbon. Turing and Morcom developed their friendship through their discussions about advanced math, physics, and astronomy. Most of their discussions were done through letter writing so many of their conversations were documented, since Turing kept every letter from Morcom. Morcom passed away in 1930 due to complications with bovine tuberculosis. This event drastically changed Alan Turing and made him even more passionate as a scientist. For a few months during the WWII, Turing was engaged to a woman, Joan Clark. She was a fellow mathematician who worked with him on the war efforts in Hut 8. They formed a close friendship and soon Turing asked if she was interested in getting married. They enjoyed the same activities such as playing chess and studying plants. While Turing was upfront with her about his “homosexual tendencies,” Clark was not put off. The engagement lasted from the spring till the late summer of 1941. In the end, Turing broke off the engagement. He was just was not comfortable continuing the relationship even though he did have a love for Joan Clark. After the war, Turing met Arnold Murray, a young unemployed man. Turing and Murray’s relationship was very off and on. In January of 1952, Turing was a victim of burglary. Being the master solver, Turing found connections and discovered it was an associate of Murray’s. Turing went to the police to report the burglary and told them who he suspected the criminal was. After police investigated the burglary they learned about Turing and Murray’s relationship. Homosexuality was a crime in England in 1952 and Prepared by the Center for the History of Physics at AIP 2 Turing was arrested for indecent acts. Turing’s punishment for this crime was a year of probation and chemical castration. For a year, Turing had to take a synthetic estragon, which was meant to render him uninterested in men. Later, on June 7, 1954 Turing committed suicide by eating an apple that was laced with cyanide. He left no note and his friends and family were shocked. The only indicator that he might have planned his death was that he arranged his will in February. Turing was 43 at the time of his passing. In January 2017, the British government posthumously pardoned thousands of men convicted of crimes related to homosexuality. This law was named the Turing law, after Alan Turing, since he is a notable name on the list of men who were posthumously pardoned. Instructions Engage: 15 Minutes Here the students will watch a brief video about the life of Alan Turing and his contributions to the world we live in while answering discussion questions What is the teacher doing? What are the students doing? Play a video for the students in a quiet Watch a video and answer the discussion questions to environment and answering questions as they learn about Alan Turing and his life. come up. Make note on whether the students are staying engaged or not. Explore: 30 Minutes Here the students will get the chance to try their own hand at working on the enigma code using a coding game form the CIA website (Listed in Required Resources below) What is the teacher doing? What are the students doing? Break up the students into equal groups and Work together in groups to try and break all the explain that they are now representing a country codes provided on the CIA site. No Hints allowed, fighting in the second World War. They students first to break all the codes wins a prize! (Wins will work against the other teams to break all the the war) codes the quickest, whoever finishes first wins the war. Supervise the students as they work through the coding game. Make sure no one is cheating, and each group is working together. Make a special emphasis on the actual enigma code. Explain: 10 Minutes The students will read a transcript of the 1951 BBC interview with Turing on the concept of building a brain. Prepared by the Center for the History of Physics at AIP 3 What is the teacher doing? What are the students doing? Pass out the transcript copies to the students. Read the transcript of the BBC interview with Turing in 1951. Write down what Turing though the furutre of the computer was. Elaborate: 5 Minutes The teacher will explain how science and the world has changed since Alan Turing’s suicide, and show resources available today for LGBT people in STEM, to end on an encouraging note for student. What is the teacher doing? What are the students doing? Explain the progress, the world and physics has Listening to the teacher and taking note that made by going over the sheet of protections while there has been progress in equality for the and resources for those in the LGBT community LGBTQ+ community, there is still have a way to and in STEM, as provided in the resource go. section below. Evaluate: The teacher will be able to evaluate the students understanding by going over the discussion questions provided as well as the students participation in the sypher decoding activity. Required/Recommended Reading and Resources • Video on Alan Turing Life by Undefined Behavior on YouTube: Created by: Cory Chang Produced by: Vivian Liu Script Editor: Justin Chen, Brandon Chen, Elaine Chang, Zachary Greenberg, Kevin Dou o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57xXSfG39i0 • CIA Cypher Breaking Game o https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/games/break-the-code • LGBT Resources Sheet o In the Supplemental Materials section • Alan Turing, “Can digital Computers Think?”, May,15, 1951 The Turing Digital Archive, BBC, pages 1-8 o http://www.turingarchive.org/browse.php/B/5 Discussion Questions Discussion Questions can be found as a Handout with a corresponding Answer Key in the Supplemental Materials to this lesson plan. 1. Where did Alan Turing attend high school? Who was his closest companion at school? Prepared by the Center for the History of Physics at AIP 4 a. Sherbon School b. Christopher Morcom 2. Where did Turing go to college? a. King’s College in Cambridge or Cambridge University 3. What was the first large problem Turing solved while he was still in college? a. Entscheidungsproblem (Decision problem), that computers could never universally answer a question on their own 4. What did Turing do during WWII? a. Cryptoanalysis (code breaking) 5. Explain what the Bombe machine does. a. Break codes by running through thousands of options in a short amount of time 6. What was the goal of Turing after the war while working at NPL? a. To build artificial intelligence, and computer brain 7.

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