Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Nut Room

Storåskolan

Other

nicola.hedlund@lindesberg.se

English

Sweden

This activity is based on the idea of integrating technology into other subjects. The students are reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Chapter 24: Veruca in the Nut Room. In the story the remaining children are shown to a special room where squirrels are used to crack open walnuts and then tap them to see if they are ‘good’ nuts or ‘bad’ nuts. Veruca decides that she wants a squirrel and enters the room. She is attacked by the squirrels and after they decide she is a ‘bad’ nut, is tossed down the rubbish chute. If Willy Wonka’s factory were to be built today, AI would certainly be used. Not only in the Nut room but also around the factory. The following AI experiment can be used to sort different types of nuts or seeds. The students need to decide what will constitute a good nut and what will constitute a bad nut. Different groups may have different ideas about this. Using: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/tiny-sorter/view Ask the students to first build their sorting machine. Follow the step by step instructions on the website. The design for the sorting machine can also be tweaked to make it appear more Willy Wonka like. Using 2 different types of nuts or seeds train your computer to recognise the ‘good’ nuts from the ‘bad’ nuts. • How accurate is your machine? • How can you improve the accuracy? • How did you decide what was a good nut and what was a bad nut? • Is the computer recognising the good from the bad, by colour, size or shape? • Is your computer more accurate if different colours are used? • How important is size? Will your nuts travel along the machine if they are to big or to heavy? • Does the computer recognise if a nut isn’t whole? • Is it possible to trick the machine? Conclusion: How difficult was it to train your machine? Did your machine work in the way you expected it to? Do you think Willy Wonka would use AI in his amazing factory? An additional exercise could be to ask the students to design a machine for Mr Wonka’s factory based on the Tiny Sorter.