Cryptographic Protocols
This is another activity that achieves something that doesn't seem possible - people who don't trust each other and can't see each other are able to agree on the outcome of a random coin flip.
This is an absorbing activity for an individual student or a whole classroom.
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Logic Circuit Builder applet from Johns Hopkins University lets you create your logic circuits and compute them to view the resulting input/output truth tables. You can view the truth tables for the common gate elements here
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An online course in Digital Circuitry was developed for ThinkQuest by Montgomery Blair High School Magnet Program for Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science is at An Online DIGitAL Circuitry Course .
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Robin Forry from the University of Cincinnati has an activity in desinging Integrated Circuits called Computer Chip Design where in the first activity students create a layout for a special purpose computer that uses mathematical functions to compute a target value given two inputs. There is also a second activity where students create a layout of components of a processor that minimizes area on the chip. This activity was developed for high school students.
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Michael Wolf from the University of Cincinnati has an activity in Input, Output and Data Communications called LMR Communication where students learn about land mobile radios through experimenting with walkie-talkies for hands on learning of general radio functions. Then the students will learn about conventional and trunked queues. This activity was developed for high school students.
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Claude Shannon's Experiment to Calculate the Entropy of English is aimed at determining the entropy of an English letter (the amount of information in bits that we obtain on the average when we learn one letter of English).
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Illuminations has an application that explains Cryptography at Codes . Cryptography is science that uses mathematics to encrypt and decrypt data.
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Illuminations has an activity Arithme-Tic-Toc where students will be introduced to modular arithmetic by first examining a five-hour analog clock and its mathematical properties. Then students will investigate patterns and relationships that exist in 12-hour addition and multiplication clock tables.
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The Royal Institution UK and Microsoft Research together have produced activities in encryption, cryptography, and zero knowledge protocols for the classroom at the locations below:
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University of California, San Diego Maths Department has applets that demonstrate concepts in Cryptography in the module Introduction To Cryptography .