Contents

• Statement Of Purpose

• Project Participants
  • Points of Contact

• Other Project-Level Links
  • Building The Hrothgar Machine (A "Tutorial").
  • Dan Davis's Project Description Site (A Copy).

• Hrothgar Inquiry Environment
  A new effort towards a scalable knowledge-building system.

Units

Ising Model

Monte Carlo evolution of a statistical physics system, demonstrating magnetic phase transitions.

Statement of Purpose

The Hrothgar Project is an effort started by the Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) at Caltech to explore the utility of high end (university research caliber) computers within high school curricula. A Beowulf Class PC cluster has been selected as the initial platform. It is intended that the 4-processor "start-up" machine constructed during the summer of 1998 will soon evolve into a 16-processor, 2 GFlops computer.

Setting up the hardware is the easy part. The harder part, by far, is finding the appropriate niche for the technology in a K-12 education environment. The nature of this niche is by no means obvious, and the first year of activities can best be characterized as a "technology insertion experiment" driven by three primary assumptions:

Large-Scale Simulations Have Educational Utility

Access to realistic, large-scale simulations would be a useful tool for teachers in the sciences, social sciences and other disciplines. This enables modeling and analysis not feasible in standard learning environments and exposes both students and teachers to advanced technology.

These Simulations Must Come From The "Research World"

In order to demonstrate both technology and research, the simulation projects run on the Beowulf machine should be adaptations of existing, research quality codes. Clearly, this cannot happen without participation of the computational scientists who designed and implemented the original code.

K-12 Educators Must Direct The Curricula Designs

Proper utilization of high performance computing in a classroom will require selective "focusing" of the science capabilities in the research codes. This cannot be accomplished without active participation by K-12 educators throughout the design and implementation phases of each potential project.

Success for this project depends on participation of computational scientists and university researchers. It is very clear, however, that leading edge technology cannot simply be dropped onto teachers' laps. Indeed, it could be argued that "educating the educators" on the importance of High Performance Computing (in general) is a significant secondary goal of this project. But, the research scientists need "education" as well, since many of them are likely to have little experience with the way in which learning actually happens with teenagers.

Partnerships of researchers and educators are key to this project. The first year will be spent exploring how these partnerships best work.

Two applications have been selected for the initial year's technology insertion projects:

• Ising Model: A "random" statistical physics simulation which demonstrates the physics of magnetization.
• Airshed:A simulation of the chemical and physical processes responsible for smog in the Los Angeles basin.

Many of the technology components for each application are already in place, and curriculum development work with high school teachers has begun. Actual classroom use is expected during the 1998-1999 school year.

Project Participants

Computational Scientists

Initial participants have come from the "extended family" of researchers associated with Caltech and Caltech's Center for Advanced Computing Research. The Ising model unit was developed by Thomas Gottschalk (CACR) and the Airshed Model by Donald Dabdub (UC Irvine, and Caltech PhD.)

Schools and Educators

The Hrothgar project is a (somewhat loose) collaborative effort between CACR and EdTech - a consortium of school districts in the San Gabriel Valley region of the greater Los Angeles area. High school teachers from the San Marino, South Pasadena and La Canada school districts have been actively involved in initial design discussions.

What About You?

While we currently have the proverbial "more work than we can handle", the Hrothgar team is interested in hearing from K-12 educators and research scientists - especially those interested in the implementation of new units!

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Contacts

Tom Gottschalk

CACR
MS 158-79
Caltech
Pasadena, CA 91125
tdg@cacr.caltech.edu

Dan Davis

CACR
MS 158-79
Caltech
Pasadena, CA 91125
ddavis@cacr.caltech.edu