Exploring Martian planetary images: C++ exercises for CS1
Harriet J. Fell, Viera K. Proulx · 1997
We present a series of programming exercises based on photographic images of Mars collected by the NASA Viking Orbiter.Even without the news that there may once have been life on Mars [l], we feel that these exercises provide an exciting platform for exploring machine representation of data, presentation of data, and methods of storing and extracting data from files.All exercises are on the level easily mastered in the first programming course. introductionThe files used in these exercises have been downloaded via the Internet from the NASA depository.They contain original unenhanced grayscale image data preceded by a label identifying the image and a histogram of the grayscale values of this image.By working with real data files students appreciate why it is important to understand data formats, file organization, file manipulation, and different conversion methods.At the same time they learn about simple image enhancement, encoding, and image exploration via sound.In addition, two of the exercises include require students to create a written document relevant to the topic.