Messages Across the Course
Sana's club built a backyard mini-golf course with foam balls and cups. Players needed to send four messages across the lawn without walking over. The club compared two ways to send information: cards with shape patterns and patterns of taps on a wooden block. A receiver used a printed key to figure out each message.
Each card showed two shapes side by side. The sender held the whole card still for four beats while the receiver read the shapes from left to right. For the tapping method, the receiver listened to two taps in order. A short tap lasted one beat. A long tap lasted three beats. There was one silent beat between the two taps.
A beat was the same length for everyone. To find the time for one tapping message, the club counted both taps and the silent beat between them. After either kind of message, the sender waited four more silent beats before starting another message. Those extra beats separated messages and were not counted as part of the sending time.
The club tested each method in quiet conditions and then while helpers clapped nearby at a comfortable volume. In every trial, the sender sent the same list of 20 messages. The sender, receiver, distance, lighting, message order, and code keys stayed the same. The receiver could see the cards clearly. The club changed the method and the background sound, then counted how many messages the receiver identified correctly.
The graph later on this sheet shows the club's results. The club also wondered what would happen if the receiver looked away, if a sender reused a pattern, or if the game needed a fifth message. Use the code key and test evidence to investigate those questions.