Human Adder

The activity aims to introduce/remember the concept of a base 2, binary adder to students in an active way, so that each student performs a specific and physical function, participating in a collaborative and open environment to make sums of two operands. The number of bits of the adder is eligible, we suggest as an interesting case 9-bit input operands with which the sum will have 10 bits. We use the carry propagation technique. Students collaborate personally on the global adder which in the case of 9-bit operands can involve 24 students, with one of the following functions: decimal to binary decoder (2 students, one per operand), register (1 student per bit of the adder), “full adder” (1 student per bit of the adder), binary to decimal decoder (final result).