Wii and Physics?

Tim Lauer of Lewis Elementary School points to an interesting use of Darwiin Remote Software and the Nintendo Wii remote to run a Roomba (a robot which will vacuum your house). I don’t have a Nintendo Wii game, but if Darwiin will capture 3D acceleration from the Wii game remote, it shouldn’t be too difficult to determine force information from the remote. So if someone is playing Wii baseball for example, it should be easy to capture the force of their swing. Perhaps students could experiment with different variables to increase the force of the swing and determine the impact on the distance the batted ball travels. Does the game show the force of the swing already?

In my physics classes we used the Vernier accelerometers to capture 3-dimensional acceleration on different amusement park rides. Although the experience turned me green, we got exceptional data (see image and graph below). I wonder if using a combination of a Wii remote, Bluetooth, and some sort of handheld device if the same sort of data could be gathered on the ride? It still doesn’t solve my motion sickness, but maybe it would save a few bucks and be fun to try.