During the first semester, our STEM class had six weeks to create our own game board with a theme of our choice that incorporated 5 changes of energy. We could have used games such as "Life" or "Sorry" for inspiration, or created our own rules! My group decided to use the Dangerous Book for Boys Game as inspiration. Our theme that we decided on was a "camping" theme, where the end objective was to be the first player to get through your "camping day" with all of the necessary materials in order to see the fireworks show at the end of the day. In our game, we were required to have a production of gas, a single and double displacement reaction, the lighting of an LED, a physical change and an energy transfer. Our first pit stop was to make eggs in the morning, where we used a double displacement precipitate reaction to create the color yellow to represent "scrambled eggs." We did so by mixing calcium nitrate and potassium chromate to react to form potassium nitrate and calcium chromate. Next, we had the campers essentially "blow up their air mattress" by using a single displacement reaction with vinegar, baking soda, and a balloon, where we added baking soda to vinegar to create a reaction that produced CO2 to blow up the balloon. Our third step was to turn on the "flashlight" for night time by using copper chloride and tin foil to break the circuit in our breadboard. Once the copper chloride wore through the tin foil, the circuit was broken, causing the LED light to turn on. Our final step was to create our "fireworks show" at the end of the night. We did so by using different salts (strontium, lithium, calcium, and copper) along with a Bunsen burner to create different color flames as a light show. We had to create our own set of rules, as well as safety instructions and cards to go with our game.
Attached below is our Instructions/Safety Warnings/Rules/Etc.
Reflection
Overall, I thought that my group succeeded in all aspects of the projects, although there were a few areas we could improve for next time. One major pit we encountered was our time management. We did have a relatively good sense of our deadline, but we definitely could have done a few things differently. For example, we spent about a week deciding on the design of our board, and then another two painting it with multiple coats of paint. We could have easily lessened the time spent on the board to allow more time for other aspects of the game. Another pit we ran in to was our need for supplies. We spent a lot of time trying to hunt down the correct chemicals we needed for our reactions and kept running out of certain ones. We could have prevented this by telling our teacher which materials we needed from the beginning so we could have planned ahead and had everything we needed. Although we ran into a few problems, we also had a good amount of peaks. My whole group had very good communication skills, which allowed us to easily share our ideas and brainstorm for the project. We were also very good at splitting up the work and having different, independent jobs while still working together. For example, we had to laminate about 100 cards, so Olivia cut the cards for me to laminate them, and Colin and Angus cut off the extra plastic. We never argued and were very supportive of one another. I thought that I personally could have been more of a contributor for the actual experiments instead of working on the details like cards and instructions. I usually am a leader in group situations, but through this project I learned that I can step back and let others be more of a leader. I also learned that it is possible to turn LED lights on by breaking a circuit, which is information I did not know before. I will make sure to improve on my personal distribution of my work indifferent areas of projects, as well as asking group mates if they need help more often. I was very happy with our end product and all of the hard work we put in, and I loved working with my group!