Un’esperienza di Alternanza Scuola Lavoro

The article is about a recent innovative experience of ‘work-related learning’ which took place in the school year 2015-2016 and involved a third class of Liceo Cecioni, a high school with a scientific specialization. The whole class was involved simultaneously. Our students were equipped with a professional accelerometer VectorNav VN-100: starting from the time series containing the three-axis accelerometer measurements they had to reconstruct, a posteriori, the movement of the person carrying it. The problem was adapted, and appropriately simplified, from a real order received by Kayser Italia S.r.l in that period. The reconstruction algorithm had to be developed on the Open Source Scilab platform, following a real ‘quality process’: the students had to prepare a work plan to follow, draw up a time sheet and fill in a document of requirements. The task of reconstructing the 3D trajectory starting from the acceleration data may seem trivial at first glance, but the whole experience was full of surprising failures which forced the students (and the teacher) to better understand how an accelerometer works and, definitely, learn some interesting physics.