Engineering/Innovation Idea - "Touch-screen" Walls

For those who have students more into the 'E' of STEM, which is Engineering, here is a project idea they may want to try. In the July, 2018, Scientific American is an article explaining how to change a wall into effectively a touchscreen surface. This can be done for about $200, and could be a good challenge for students. In addition, they can try to rig up a circuit board that can be read out by a computer and try to produce images of objects in the room that can be picked up by the wall.

If this is done successfully, one can begin to have students think of clever applications of the wall. Keep in mind these definitions (my favorites are from creativity guru Sir Ken Robinson, in his book "Out of Our Minds"):
Imagination: process of bringing to mind things that are not present to our senses;
Creativity: process of developing original ideas that have value;
Innovation: process of putting new ideas into practice.

Let students innovate with the wall, and see where it takes them. While this is not necessarily research for new discoveries, this is the type of project that will allow students to become engineers, who take existing science and figure out ways of using it to solve real-world, practical problems. For instance, what if a store had such a wall - what are some ways it could be used by the store employees? Or in a home? In a police station? What about uses of this sort of wall in outdoor settings? Could be a lot of fun trying this!