Description:
For this project I was fortunate enough to work with Ben Naomi and Hana. Together we were given the challenging task of making a board game that included chemistry along with it. The easy part was choosing a board game which was one of my favorites and a childhood classic, Sorry. We couldn't buy the game of sorry and use that board so we made our own. Naomi and Hana put lots of work into making our board look as close to the actual game as it could be. They focused on sketching the little details on the board as I am not the most artistic person:) If you look at the picture below you will see the game board but also something unusual on top of the board. With this project we had to incorporate something with a chemistry domino effect that had something hit another thing eventually triggering the end result. We decided on building a rube Goldberg as our chemistry domino effect. As you can see from the picture you swing the boot back to kick a marble that will go down various tracks eventually setting off a pulley that will roll 2 dice. You see this was a board game so we couldn't just have a random rube Goldberg machine in the middle of our project, how we incorporated the rube Goldberg into the game was that the dice that the pulley would roll allowed you to move forward however many spaces showed on the dice. We designated 4 spots on our game board in between the slide spaces that if you landed on them you would be able to test your luck with this rube Goldberg (a real game changer). Another difference from our game to sorry is that we made our own science cards with questions on them. If you answered the question on the card correctly then you could move however many spaces it said on the card. Unfortunately for those who don't know science too well if you missed the question you would put the card back into the deck and your turn would be skipped. We decided on using 3 playing pieces instead of the usual 4 in order to speed the game up.
Chemistry Concepts:
We had a total of 5 reactions. Our first reaction was to capture a gas. We used carbon dioxide gas to blow up a balloon. The materials that we used for this reaction were a beaker, acetic acid (AcOH), sodium bicarbonate, and a balloon. For our second reaction we did a double displacement reaction. For this one we put two clear solutions, potassium iodine and lead nitrate, into a watch glass, and a yellow color was created. This double displacement reaction was an example of a color change. The third reaction was a double replacement reaction. We put 5 drops of NaOH into a watch glass, and added 1 drop of indicator solution to it. Then we added hydrocloric acid to the watch glass, and a color change occured. The new color indicated that the base in the solution had been neutralized and that the solution was becoming acidic. For the single displacement reaction we put zinc into a 10ml beaker and added hydrocloric acid to the beaker. The hydrocloric acid reacted with the zinc, and caused it to fizz and bubble.
Reflection:
I really enjoyed working on this project with my other group members. We were able to learn quite a bit about different types of reaction through this project as I learned what and how to make a double displacement, double replacement, and a single replacement reaction. Out of these my favorite reaction was our color change reaction as adding different chemicals together cause them to turn yellow. Much like every project there are highs and lows, peaks and pits and this project was no different. One of the peaks my group had is that we all worked very well together, Ben and I were able to build most of the rube Goldberg while Naomi and Hana focused on the game board and chemical reactions. Another thing my group did well was we problem solved, we made quick decisions when we were faced with adversity and ended up pulling through and making a great project. One thing my group didn't do very well was time manage, we didn't have a lot of time to do this project so when we got off too a slow start that made us behind and forced us to come in after class a lot. Another thing my group didn't do too well is that we didn't stay on task the whole time, especially at the beginning we had problems brainstorming so we became very behind in our project. This was my favorite we did this year and I hope future students get the experience we were able to get from this amazing project.