This article exemplifies a learning methodology for physical computation with electrical and nonelectrical physical entities using Arduino coding and interfacing. The target group is undergraduate physics majors. Instead of following a predetermined setup, it emphasizes the sovereign thought of the student and demonstrates how the same microcontroller system, with minor variation in hardware and code, can be implemented to a completely different type of application, such as low- and high-voltage switching, light and temperature sensing, producing sound, and generating voltage waveforms.
The microprocessor of a computer performs numerical computing using only digital data and digital electronic circuits. In contrast, the computation executed by the microcontroller involves physical objects, such as interfaced sensors and transducers that can respond to external electrical or nonelectrical signals and execute precise calculations and decision-making. Such a computational process with a combination of hardware and software is referred to as physical computing.1 The Arduino...