Arecibo Message at 50 - computer science classroom activities

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Arecibo Message (transmitted by radio wave from the telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on 16th November 2024) the CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun) project from Queen Mary University of London have put together some classroom activities with a computer science twist. We hope your class enjoy them.

Solutions, accompanying teachers’ notes and other information can be found at the link in the accompanying material (all free).

Contents (PDFs, zipped)
0. Arecibo Message at 50 - information
A copy of this text.

1. Arecibo Pixel Puzzle – planets and telescope
Follow the colour key or choose your own colours (you’ll need 3 different ones) and colour in the picture. If you’re using the suggested colours, colour all the 0s as black, all the 3s as yellow and all the 6s as purple.

2. Arecibo Message – quiz
A more general science quiz about the contents of the message.

3. Reach for the stars
The Arecibo Message was sent by a very high frequency radio wave, inaudible to human ears. Try your hand at decoding a human-audible version of part of the message - you’ll need to access the sound files at the link above.

4. Compression Run Length Encoding
Using frequency / data pairs your class will recreate a portion of the Arecibo Message in colour, then encode the same portion in binary. Your class can recreate the image on squared paper or use the Excel sheet included.

CS4FN is funded by the EPSRC; this particular project was supported by the Centre for Public Engagement at QMUL.

More free stuff
Our CS4FN ‘shop’ (everything is £0) on TES
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/JoBrodieCS4FN

CS4FN is supported through EPSRC Research Grant EP/W033615/1.