In this project, my group and I had to create, present, and play our very own chemistry board game. Our challenge was to make a normal board game, but include three types of chemical reactions. These reactions were a single displacement reaction, a double displacement reaction, and a production of gas. We also had to incorporate a lighting of an LED and a mechanical change of energy. To begin the making of this project, we began by brainstorming a list of possible themes. We came up with a variety of ideas, like the jungle, the city, and pirates. The idea that we all ended up agreeing on, was a Hollywood Theme. There would be four players, which would be Beyonce, Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift, and Justin Bieber. These players would then compete for the most amount of "fans" and whoever completed the route with the most amount would win. In this project, the game board components include the three reactions, the LED, the Hollywood sign, the four game pieces, and the 50 game cards which players collect. This project was given to us at the end of the semester, so we used everything that we had been taught from the previous months. Mostly everything that we had learned in that unit had been about the different types of chemicals, and that was built off of us learning about atoms. This allowed us to be very knowledgeable of the chemistry required to be found in the board game.
Concepts we used in our Chemical Dominoes Project
Single Displacement Reaction - A chemical reaction where part of an ionic compound is removed and replaced by a new element
Double Displacement Reaction - A chemical reaction where two ionic compounds dissolve in water to switch the anions and create two new compounds
Production of Gas Reaction - A bicarbonate (baking soda) and an acetic acid (vinegar) combine to break down into CO2 and water
Potential Energy - Stored energy in an object. We used this when we knocked dominoes over to spill the ammonium sulfate into the copper nitrate pool
Pits and Peaks of the Chemical Dominoes Project
As our first project of our year in STEM Chemistry, we created board games and this project would sum up would we had learned in the first semester. My group was Luke Shroyer and Augi Soto and here are our peaks and pits. Our first pit was that we could have used more time. Since this project's due date was within the last two weeks of schools, we did have other commitments as high school students, such as jobs and other classes. Even with extracurriculars in our lives, we were able to complete a functioning board game which successfully produced the correct reactions. Our first peak were the materials provided. With as much freedom as we got with this project, we were also given various board sizes, drills, breadboard LED parts, and miscellaneous tools to better our board game. For example. we wouldn't have had access to a laminator if not for this project. Our second pit was that we only had three group members. In this project, most groups had four members. This made finishing the entire project more difficult on everyone. I also had to bring the project home with me multiple times after school in order to completely finish every required component. Our second peak was our time management. Even though we were very busy during the work time, we were able to find time in our schedules to finish the board. I came in a couple times during lunch to finish laminating the playing cards and paint the actual board.