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Make It Move · Module 5 of 8
📱 Shared phone

The Phone Is Full of Sensors

That shared phone already has more sensors than most robots — you just have to look.

📱 🧭 ↕️ 🔆
A phone tilted at an angle with a compass needle swinging on the screen.

🎒 What you need

✋ Do this

  1. Open the compass. Turn slowly in a circle and watch the number change. The phone feels the Earth's magnetic field — that is a sensor.
  2. Bring a nail or magnet close. Watch the number go mad, then take it away. You just jammed a sensor.
  3. Tilt the phone slowly and watch the screen rotate. Something inside is feeling which way is down.
  4. Cover the little sensor near the top of the screen with your thumb during a call. The screen goes black — point at it. That is a proximity sensor doing exactly what your stick did in module 3.
  5. Write a list: every sensor you found in ten minutes. Aim for four.
  6. For each one, write one job a robot could do with it. Example: compass, so a rover always heads back to the borehole.

💡 Why it works

Sensors turn something in the world — tilt, direction, light, nearness — into a number a machine can use in a rule. A drone stays level with the same kind of tilt sensor you just found in a phone. Once you see sensors as number-makers, robots stop being mysterious.

🔥 Challenge

Design a robot on paper that uses THREE of the sensors you found. Draw it and label what each sensor is for.

📖 New words

magnetic fieldthe invisible pull that makes a compass point north
proximityhow near something is
🧭
Sensor Scout

Tap when you have finished this module.