Category Archives: Science

Unit 2 – Unit Project

In Science class, part of our ‘Electricity’ unit consisted of making a solar-powered battery which could be used to light a light bulb, which would then have different uses depending on the user. For instance, the lamps could be used as portable flashlights, study lamps, etc. This project’s goal was to teach us how a basic electrical circuit worked, in order to make us understand the electrical appliances that surround us in our daily life.

Before starting the experiment, I was familiar with the theoretical making of an eletrical circuit, because of Science classes both this year and in past grades. However, I was very unfamiliar with the practical part of making a lamp. Thankfully, we had the opportunity to inspire ourselves from other people’s projects, both from our class and from the Internet. The circuitry of our project is simple in itself, which allows an easy use (only a switch to turn on the lamp and to recharge the battery).

A pattern and difficulty that was repeated from our past project (the atom game) is that we restarted the project from scratch: restarting is part of the process of making this game, but I think we did so too late, close to when the project was due, and that caused us to be late for turn-in. Next time, one of my goals would definitely be to think the project through entirely, even if it costs me time, in order to complete it in due date and with maximal quality.

Another problem we had was material damage. Our material was broken, and we consequently had to replace it, costing the school money and us, time. Next time, a goal for our whole group would be to be more careful with the given material. But apart from the circuitry materials, we had, as the last time we did a project in the Makerspace, access to any other materials we wished to use- and I think we managed it well.

A goal I had from last unit’s project was to ‘spend less time brainstorming and more time actually working’. However, on this project, I realized (the hard way) that thinking about the mechanism is just as important as building it; next time, I wish to balance out the these two steps.

In this project, I learned about all the other processes that are related to building a lamp: such as soldering, wire stripping, etc. and this will most probably help me in future projects that include circuitry and electricity.

Unit 1 – Periodic Table Game

In our last science class, we played games that we created in the previous classes. These games are science-related and have to, more specifically, have a relation with atoms; including ions, ionic bonds, valence shells, etc. Before we started the assignment, I personally felt pretty comfortable with this subject. But after it, I felt even more that way.

I decided to make this project about ionic bonds and the how an atom is made (which are, I realized as we made the game, closely associated). To create this game, all the knowledge we needed was basic printing understanding (a lot of the material we needed had to be printed). To play it, however, we needed to understand the rules of the game, which are as it turned out quite hard to understand.

The main problem, which took us weeks to solve, is the map of the world. The original Risk game needs to have a two-dimensional map of the world. We first tried to print it, but printing a map of the world on A4 paper, even continent by continent, is very hard to do. The second method that we tried was to draw the map. We required help from some of our classmates, but we didn’t come to a satisfactory result. But then, a few days before the due date of the assignment, I had the idea to print the map on a A3 paper, which is a format bigger than A4. With a few resizings, we had printed an entire world map which satisfied us.The only resources we used to make was cardboard and printed paper – but the game is played with the map, pen and paper. At a point of the game, it is necessary to draw an atom’s shells and electrons.

I feel like we did our best for the concept of the game, which is roughly speaking a world conquer of atoms; it was hard to combine Risk: The Game with a scientific concept, even more so with atoms; that would be the strength of our game, originality. But I’ll admit we could have done better on the map that we play the game on. It is what we wanted, but it is too simple; just cardboard and paper. We could have made it more appealing.

As a learner, this assignment taught me that originality is key. Originality in a work is what makes it interesting for the maker. Some factors make our game both similar and different to others’. It was similar because everybody made their game from scratch and invested originality and hard work into their work. What was different, however, was that we didn’t make the same type of games, nor did we used the same ressources.

It was recommended for this game that we pushed on conceptual linking, and I think this was what we excelled at. What it did not meet, however, is the variety of scientific concepts answered, because we only did two concepts that resembled each other, which are the structure of an atom and ionic bonding. It is mandatory (or at least makes the game a lot easier) to use the periodic table of the elements in our game, more specifically the symbol of the atom and its electrons, in order to draw the atom. So, you have to practice working with the periodic table. But what we could improve is actually to remove the periodic table and give shuffled cards of the elements instead, because we realized the periodic table made the game too easy, and decreases high level thinking.

Obviously, I learned more about the school printer (I tried to print my work on three different printers before I found the right result). I had also never heard of the MakerSpace, so that includes a whole set of tools I learned about. If I were to redo this assignment, I would probably do the map better, use more complex materials, even though that wouldn’t improve the quality of the game. I feel like it is the main thing I could do better if I had more time.

What I learned from this project is that time should be managed as best as possible, since it is the most important factor in a time-limited project like this. But the goal I have for the next assignment is to spend less time brainstorming and more time actually working.

I learned a lot from playing other’s games; on an academical level, because it was a game of reviewing, but I also learned more about the techniques other used to finish this project.

Overall, I think this was a very interesting assignment; me and my group worked on this with passion because we all found it captivating. I think it was the fact that we had to make our own game that made us persevere throughout this whole project. We also learned more about some scientific concepts such as ionic bonding and the formation of atoms while playing the game, but also while making it.

Developing our project

This is a picture of us brainstorming ideas for our game. The idea that is illustrated in this picture finally had nothing to do with our project.

Developing our project
We used virtual resources to develop our project

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Developing our project
Developing our project
Making our game from scratch
Making our game from scratch