coding – Whizz Pop Bang Blog

Who won a Picoh robot from Ohbot?

Posted on 2nd August 2021 | by Jo at Whizz Pop Bang | Leave a Comment

In Whizz Pop Bang: Robots Rock, we ran a competition to win a Picoh robot from Ohbot, and we’re so excited to be able to announce the winners! Read on to find out who won, and to read the brilliant robot jokes and science jokes they coded Picoh to read as their competition entries!

Picoh is a smart little robot that can speak, look around and interact with you when you connect it to a computer. Its LED matrix eyes can blink and change shape. It can smile and frown and it has lights and sound in its shoulders. Whatever Picoh does is all up to your programming skill!

Whizz Pop Bang readers were challenged to code Picoh to tell a joke or say what you love about science, and here are our winning entries! Each one wins their own programmable Picoh robot from ohbot.co.uk. Well done to Sophie, Toby and Ella – watch their winning wisecracks being told by Picoh in the videos below…

Joke by Sophie

How much does it cost a pirate to get his ears pierced?
A buck an ear!

Joke by Toby

What do you call a scientific dinosaur?
A testasaurus!

Joke by Ella

Why did the robot fail his exam?
Because he was a bit rusty!

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Celebrating International Friendship Day: Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage

Posted on 30th July 2021 | by Jo at Whizz Pop Bang | Leave a Comment

Today is International Friendship Day and we’re celebrating a friendship that led to some super-important scientific developments!

Find out more in Whizz Pop Bang: CODING CAPERS

The amazing Ada Lovelace was born in London in 1815, and loved maths and poetry from a young age. When she was a teenager, she met a mathematician and inventor called Charles Babbage. Charles was fed up of doing long calculations by hand, so he invented a machine that could do sums for him. He called it the Difference Engine.
Ada was really interested in the Difference Engine. She was inspired to study maths harder than ever before, and she and Charles became good friends.

Charles later invented a machine, called the Analytical Engine, that could do ANY calculations by following a series of steps – but it was so complicated that he found it hard to explain to other people how it would work!

Ada came to the rescue. She was so good at maths that she understood the machine and was able to explain it to other people. Ada wrote a code that turned a real-life maths problem into a list of instructions that the machine could understand. This was the world’s first algorithm (computer code).

She and Charles made a great team! Sadly, Ada died before she could actually help Charles to get the machine made, but the discovery that machines could follow instructions led to the amazing computers that we all use so much today.

Find out more about this fantastic friendship and the science of coding in Whizz Pop Bang: CODING CAPERS!

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Watch a surgical robot peeling a grape

Posted on 28th May 2021 | by Jo at Whizz Pop Bang | Leave a Comment

Robot surgeons allow surgeons to perform complex operations with more precision. Robot surgeons allow surgeons to perform complex operations with more precision. A real surgeon operates the robotic arms from a console.

Want to know more about the robo-revolution? Whizz Pop Bang: Robots Rock is available in our shop now!

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Watch a cheetah robot in action!

Posted on 28th May 2021 | by Jo at Whizz Pop Bang | Leave a Comment

The gymnast of the robot world, MIT’s mini cheetah robot can execute a perfect 360° backflip! It can also walk the right way up or upside down and tackle bumpy terrain twice as fast as the average person’s walking speed.

Watch it in action here: