Sunday Science: Raspberry Pi

Pi, not pie. The Raspberry Pi is a tiny device with a world of possibilities.

The Raspberry Pi is a micro-computer. It's like someone has scaled down your laptop to the size of a credit card.

Here's my Pi with a Lego Ironman for some sense of scale:

The Raspberry Pi was originally designed to address the skills gap in the computing sector. Yes, millions of children are happy to use computers - but do they understand what's going on underneath their iPad's screen?

The Raspberry Pi was born to address this deficit in use and understanding. It can teach you the basics of programming.

How can it do that?

All you need to do is to hook up your Pi to a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Turn it on and, after a simple setup process, you'll be greeted with a familiar looking screen.

From here, you can mess around on Minecraft (there's a Pi-based version available on the latest models) or start tinkering with some basic programming.

Sounds simple, right?

Well, it is. And the best bit is that a Pi will only cost you just over £30.

​The not so simple part is what you can do with your Pi. Which is pretty much anything.

You can make a media centre, create a retro video games console, make a camera.... or just play Minecraft.

You can find out more about the sort of projects you could achieve here at Pi HQ: https://www.raspberrypi.org/.

Here's my personal favourite, a holographic death star!

What is Sunday Science?

Hello. I'm the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding - in science, it often feels like a barrier.

So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series "Sunday Science" gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. 

If there's a scientific term or topic you'd like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to  [email protected] or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up to our weekly newsletter, pop your email in the form below - thanks!