Teaching Grasshopper to kids : any idea of a fun project / resources?

I’d like to teach Grasshopper to my 13 YO daughter.
We did a simple project in the forme of a funky pencil cup.
Looking out for suggestions…

A doll house. No question about it. A pink one. It’s not PC, but it’s not Mac either :wink:

// Rolf

PS: I have three daughters. (and four sons).

1 Like

Pink doll house idea rejected.
:wink:

3 Likes

Anything pink will do. :wink:

// Rolf

Hi,

Attractor patterns grasshopper or C#, Python… etc :wink:

Cheers,
BVR

3 Likes

A rosette of some sort. You can get a lot of interesting patterns cheaply, just by using Array Polar.

1 Like

some ideas…

4 3 2 1

copyright to their respective owners.

3 Likes

I have a 13yr old, the last few years in school they have worked in inventor and have output to 3D printers and a few other formats. That said, its pretty hard to get the phone out of her hand as of late. I do think it would be helpful to illustrate some of their math work in a colorful 3D format to show its all not just numbers on a page.

2 Likes

EXACTLY !!!
If I had learned math using Grasshopper, it would have been a whole different deal.
I remember that what I enjoyed the most was programming stuff on my Casio Fx4000p…

One day, teachers will realize that kids all want to learn, except they need to have fun in the process ; instead, this is what we got.

1 Like

I remember years ago, when I was 13 and my father taught me Grasshopper. We built a treehouse.

agreed. Unfortunately as soon i try to interject or teach them something i get ‘don’t tell me what to do, dad’

these concepts illustrated are super helpful.

Stop everything. Make biomes for Minecraft (voxel/pixel art) and put them as the next personal project to learn how to code for Minecraft.

2 Likes

I think you should make it relate to things she finds interesting, otherwise it’s not very likely she will be attracted to playing with GH. What does she find about the things You do with it? Does it make her eager learning it?

Maybe folding/origami? At first fold it with paper, then draw the crease pattern in rhino and simulate folding with gh (k2 or crane). Next step could be to make parametric crease patterns/tesselations. After that maybe discrete curved folding simulations.

1 Like

something involving Fibonacci or the golden rule.

  1. make a definition illustrating the golden ratio.
  2. make note of the patterns.
  3. go outside and find plants that have that pattern

i dunno, it was the first thing i thought of

1 Like

I see you like your paper bent…

1 Like

Well to tell the full story, she has an assignment from school to draw something with Sketchup.
She chose a pincil holder and did it in Sketchup, but I showed her how Grasshopper would blow SK out of the water, and she was genuinely interested.

I might try to help her with her math exercises using GH as a way to illustrate the relevant concepts.
If I could get her to actually use GH on her own to help her understand what she is studying, I would consider this a great achievement.

1 Like

There may be some ideas here: http://rhino3du.ning.com/

And then there is SudoHopper that can be played by a group together: https://www.mcneelmiami.com/sudohopper3d

Paper or laser cut lamp they can make with the grasshopper definition.

Image sampling art is always a good one: https://www.pinterest.com/alieslami1987/grasshopper3d-_image-sampler/

Spirograph style art is too.

There is the obvious tie into programming and math. But, I think all of these things help them practice the thinking process necessary in all programming.

Edit: coincident values + trends


Illustrating math and data is a good idea to create intuition about what you’re dealing with.

I once made some diagrams illustrating sensor data (in this case engine under load) to find “incompatible” (invalid) values, by making 3D objects from the diagram and intersect them (intersections if coincident values & trends are the “invalid” data that must be avoided).

I think it is a disaster that kids don’t get to know that almost any math can be represented as geometry, and so they could get an intuition about math long before they know all the spooky formulas.

Translate this idea to something more relevant and interesting in your daughters world of thought.

And don’t forget, more use of pink color, less blue, and off you go.

// Rolf

Yep. This is why I love this Youtube chanel so much.

1 Like