A Guide to Smartphone Sensors
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National Aeronautics and Space Administration A Guide to Smartphone Sensors Experimeter’s Guide To Smartphone Sensors Dr. Sten Odenwald Version 6.0: May 2019 [1] Introduction Smartphones have now become ubiquitous instruments for communications and information retrieval, but as part of their functionality they also contain a variety of sensors to determine their orientation, location and meteorological conditions. Over the years, hundreds of ‘apps’ have been designed to access this hidden information, turning smartphones into powerful measurement platforms, and usually at no cost. Meanwhile, mathematics plays a key role in all scientific investigations because research and observation usually involve taking some form of data, and often this data is in numeric form. The task then becomes one of organizing the data, looking for patterns in it, and finding an explanation for these patterns. These explanations, called theories, make predictions for future experiments and observations, which then have to be tested to see if what was predicted is in line with what was observed. All of these steps involve working with numbers. The first part of this Guide examines a wide variety of apps that measure interesting physical parameters such as temperature, pressure, motion, light intensity and many more quantities. The objective is to assess how well these apps and sensors actually measure the indicated parameters so that formal and informal educators and citizen scientists can gauge their reliability. Common apps and smartphone platforms are compared to professional-grade measurements to determine reliability and accuracy. A collection of 45 experiments are also provided for using these apps to make a variety of interesting real-world measurements. In the second part of this Guide, you will use data created from a variety of smartphone apps and examine this data using a variety of mathematical operations. Smartphone apps can be downloaded that measure a variety of interesting physical properties such as magnetic fields, pressure, temperature and acceleration. This guide will show you how to access this data, which you can record in an Excel spreadsheet and then manipulate to search for patterns or to establish the accuracy and precision of the smartphone sensors. Beginning with the concept of ‘significant figures’ you will investigate the statistical processes of using mean and median, and standard deviation to explore how to analyze data. These skills will then be extended to discuss how to explore the accuracy and precision of a measurement, calibrating measured data, and testing a prediction against measurements to determine their statistical significance. Dr. Sten Odenwald NASA Space Science Education Consortium May, 2019 (Version 1.0) [2] Table of Contents Alignment with Standards ..................................................................................................................8 ISTE Technology in Education ................................................................................................................... 8 Math and Science Education NGSS ........................................................................................................... 8 I. A Guide to Smartphone Sensors and Experiments Magnetism ...................................................................................................................................... 10 Experiment 1: Comparing Smartphone and Geomagnetic Coordinates ............................................... 12 Experiment 2: Finding the Smartphone Magnetometer! ...................................................................... 15 Experiment 3: Can magnetism be shielded? .......................................................................................... 16 Experiment 4: Measuring the parameters of a magnet ......................................................................... 17 Experiment 5: Detecting Geomagnetic Storms ...................................................................................... 19 Clinometer ....................................................................................................................................... 21 Experiment 1: Measurement of sun angle ............................................................................................. 22 Experiment 2: Finding your Latitude using the Sun ................................................................................ 23 Experiment 3: Finding the altitude of a rocket or a cloud ...................................................................... 25 Radiation ......................................................................................................................................... 27 Experiment 1: Measuring your Local Background Radiation .................................................................. 30 Experiment 2: Measuring Radiation Dosages In a Jet Plane ................................................................... 31 Experiment 3 – Other Radiation Sources ................................................................................................ 31 Gravity ............................................................................................................................................ 32 Experiment 1: Rotation of Earth ............................................................................................................. 34 Pressure .......................................................................................................................................... 37 Experiment 1: Air Pressure at Different Altitudes .................................................................................. 39 Experiment 2: Monitoring Weather Changes ......................................................................................... 40 Experiment 3 – A Simple Pressure Thermometer. .................................................................................. 43 Position-Distance ............................................................................................................................. 45 Experiment 1: How accurate are the distance meters?............................................................................ 46 Compass Bearing ............................................................................................................................. 47 Experiment 1: Comparison with Analog Compass. ............................................................................... 48 [3] Experiment 2: Comparison with Magnetometer Direction ..................................................................... 49 Sound Intensity ................................................................................................................................ 52 Experiment 1: Creating a Sound Level Library ...................................................................................... 54 Experiment 2: Finding the Zero-Level. ................................................................................................... 55 Experiment 3: Smallest Detectable Difference ...................................................................................... 56 Other Experiment Suggestions ............................................................................................................... 56 Acceleration .................................................................................................................................... 57 Experiment 1: Comparison of Static Acceleration .................................................................................. 59 Experiment 2: Measuring Controlled Acceleration with a Turntable ..................................................... 60 Experiment 3: The location of the acceleration sensor. ......................................................................... 64 The Gyroscope ................................................................................................................................. 66 Experiment 1: Simple controlled rotations using a turntable................................................................. 67 Light Intensity .................................................................................................................................. 71 Experiment 1: Exploring Lumins and Lux. ............................................................................................ 73 Experiment 2: Light Flux and Electrical Power ...................................................................................... 75 Experiment 3: A Catalog of Every-Day Light Levels ................................................................................ 76 Experiment 4: The World of Dim Lighting ............................................................................................ 77 Experiment 5: Reflectivity and Albedo .................................................................................................. 78 Experiment 6: Atmospheric Aerosols and Haze ..................................................................................... 79 Experiment 7: Detecting the seasonal insolation change. ....................................................................... 82 Color Temperature ........................................................................................................................... 86 Experiment 1: App-based Spectrophometers: How good are they? ...................................................... 90 Experiment 2: Creating a catalog of