It's About Time
In past times, ocean navigators tossed a piece of wood over the side of their ships and noted how long until the ship passed the wood. They used this time measurement and the length of the ship to calculate their speed and estimate how far they had traveled. In this activity, students act the part of a GPS signal traveling to the receiver to learn how travel time is converted to distance.
Students learn how travel time is converted to distance.Copyright Wikimedia Commons http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Stopwatch2.jpg
Our world is quickly becoming wireless. Remote controls, cell phones, laptops and GPS technology use wireless signals of various types. Electrical and computer engineers create wireless technology and equipment that sends and receives information through the air. They also decide what kind of information to transmit. In the case of GPS, time information is send and later converted to distance information via mathematical calculations.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Examine error propagation (time delay).
- Understand that GPS distance is determined by knowing the time it takes a signal to travel from a satellite to the receiver and multiplying that time by the speed of light. They should learn that a delay in the signal's travel will increase the time and make the receiver think the satellite is farther away.
- Describe the effects of the atmosphere on GPS receiver error
- Understand early navigation technologies and how advancements in technology have improved our ability to navigate