Category: Scimatics 🧮

This project was about creating an object with the maximum surface area or volume. You could also choose to be with a partner or work alone! I chose to be with a partner and ended up with my friend hannah. Together we chose to create a fridge with the maximum surface area! Don’t ask why we made a fridge I am not so sure myself. 

The platform we used was called Tinkercad and it is an app and web browser. 

Now getting onto the process… yay!

To get warmed up to Tinkercad we were instructed to create a rectangle with the surface area of 475mm2. Yet sadly I was not able to do so, and looking back now I think I can probably do it now! 

To understand the different shapes we might have to use to create our object we had to learn about how to calculate the surface area, circumference, area, volume etc. So we did multiple work books to help us understand cylinders, triangles and rectangular prisms.

At this point our fridge was looking like this:

Hannah was working mainly on the frame work like the actual fridge part and the coolers. Well I worked on the door and door handles and extra little thingy ma-bobs (ex: the food).

As you could see I from the photo I had the following shapes: triangle, rectangle, oval prism, cone, and triangle. Lucky for me I do not know how to calculate an oval prism and come so I just transformed the cone into a triangle and the oval prism into a cylinder.

After the workbooks we moved onto milestone 2! (Milestone one was figuring out what we were creating). Milestone 2 was to find what formulas we would need to calculate the individual shapes in our fridge. I needed to be able to calculate the volume and surface area of rectangular prisms, cylinders, and triangular prisms. Here are the formulas that I had to follow:  

When I finished finalizing my shapes I moved on to the hefty part; calculating all of my shapes. In the end I had 12 shapes in total, and that is counting my 2 carrots which where the exact same. I actually found calculating the shapes kind of fun and luckily it didn’t take me to long to finish after I got the hang of it. Here are my completed calculations:

After Hannah and I both finished our calculations we had to work on a presentation e would then present to the class. If you didn’t already guess it was on our fridge. The presentation had to be about the process of our fridge building with some of the calculations in it!

I think throughout this project I did pretty good. I started off a bight rough because I did not have enough shapes since I misinterpreted the instructions. Personally I think I used my class time efficiently and I stayed on task. Also, I used tutorials to my advantage like I stated I wanted too in my learning plan.

Core competencies: 

Applying and Innovating:

During class time I feel like I was able to get the time I needed to create and do my work. If I felt the need to go to a tutorial I would go and that helped me a lot. Well working with my partner I was able to adapt some ideas and ask for help.

Reasoning and Analyzing:

I had a total of 12 shapes and 3 different shapes to calculate. We successfully   reached our goal to maximize the surface area. After navigating the basic of Tinkercad I was able to design the 3D fridge.

Communicating and Representing:

I finished calculating everything, but I forgot to talk about my calculations in the presentation but they where on the slides. I calculated 3 rations in total, the ratio of my object in total, the ratio of my door and the ratio of the whole fridge.

In the end as I said we completed our goal of maximizing our surface area. Our ratio ended up being 4.08:1 and 4.05:1 without the food and extra things.

(And my ratio of the door ended up being 1.02:1)

thank you for reading! Bye <3

Helllooo, welcome back again, the latest project scimatics 8 has done is about…

 Drumroll…

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The Kinetic Molecular Theory and the Atomic Theory, super cool I know, I know (by the way I will be saying KMT instead of Kinetic molecular theory and AT instead of the Atomic theory).

We started our projects like usual, with creating a mind map of stuff we know and wonder. 

We also wrote on white boards about things we wondered as well. Here are some of the ones my class did:

Fast forward, and we learned more about the KMT and AT using work books and doing a gem stone ID challenge.

Since we now knew more information about atoms and molecules we had to create our own! We were able to use these in our finished project as well (more about what our end project was later). We had to use a chart template to draw our molecules on; here is mine (I’m semi-proud): 

We did a quick test to see where we were at, then we headed on to creating our game, which is for your information, the beloved end project. Our game could also be a simulation as well; one thing was mandatory though in that it had to involve the KMT and AT. I chose to create a game. 

Coding a game was hard because we had to use a platform called Scratch and I, 100 precent, over shot my planning. We had to plan out what we were going to do for our game in a Pages document. Here was my plan:

Soon I realized I didn’t have the skill to do this so I took away some hard details and I tried again. Yea, that didn’t work either and so I was struggling at this point because we didn’t have very long before it was due. So I ended up keeping things simple and created a question and answer game. It was a very stressful process for me even though it shouldn’t have been. I have definitely learned to shoot small then grow up from there since it will save me a lot of time. Here is my “completed” game: 

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/655864114

When doing this project I found learning about all the different atomic model types interesting. It was cool to see that we have come from having just a plain sphere to understanding there are neutrons, electrons and more. I was able to write down my ideas and I knew what I was going to do. Even though it didn’t always work out I found I was able to spread my ideas easier doing this project. I feel like my coding could have used work and my game needs more finesse. My game does not have many puzzles but you have to use your memory to answer the questions. In my learning plan I said I will ask specific questions to help me understand more, and when I went to tutorial since I needed help on coding I was able to ask clarifying questions that helped me a lot. As I said above I need to improv at aiming at a skill level I am at, and since I aimed high this put me back a lot when coding my game. This project has definitely  taught me things about how to improve my learning habits and more about the kinetic molecular theory and atomic theory. You can see how I have learned many things in my end mind map where i answered some of the questions I had:

Answering the curricular competencies:

Questioning and predicting: When I could tell I needed to look beyond the resources our school provided I went to my peers or searched online. Also, if any questions popped into my head about the KMT/AT or about how to code, I would try and seek the answers to help predict what might help me code or understand the theories better. For example, as i was creating a game showing many things about the KMT and AT and all we learned, I was curious and kept asking myself how someone could take a scientific topic and turn it into an intriguing game. I think I am a sun. 

Scientific communication: When coding everyone in my class communicated with each-other so we all could learn more. Also, when coding my game I felt confident in knowing how to include scientific vocabulary/language. 

Reasoning and analyzing: I think I was a sunny cloud since my end result was a bit messy but Im proud of myself for keeping on trying and adapting many times. For each sprite that was moving around I used the same code so it wouldn’t be too confusing for the player (or me). Also, having the sprite move around was supposed to make it more intriguing for the player as well.

I hope you enjoyed learning along the way with me bye <3

Welcome back,  today I will be explaining the process of answering the driving question:

“How can we test the pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection?”

First off, what is the pythagorean theorem? The pythagorean theorem is the sum of the legs of a triangle that equal the hypotenuse (the side opposite from the right angle). 

After learning some more about triangles and the law of reflection we learned how we were going to prove it-by creating a laser triangle display! (more about that later). Creating a display all by yourself and doing the math and other things would be a lot of work so we were put into groups. The people in my group were,

Jupiter, Luca, Frankie, Mackenzie, and of course me.

Now onto the big load of work…

To show a bit more of what the display was supposed to be for this project here is ours:

It is basically a cardboard base decorated to a certain theme (your choice), then a triangle gets drawn on and you put a mirror on two corners of the triangle and the laser at the corner with no mirror.

After getting into our groups we had a little bit of awkward silence, but soon after we started working. The first thing we did was find a good pythagorean triple to use to create the triangle. The one we used was: 6² + 8² = 10²

Luca drew out the triangle as we all planned out the design and theme, and once we had the triangle down we started creating our design plan. Since we got blue paper to cover the base we decided the theme should be the sky (a group already did the sea). Here is some of the process:

Getting the laser to line up with the mirrors was hard, the goal was to get the laser back to “home base” (back to the laser pointer). To make it easier we had the laser supported in a support actually for the mirror. When we put it in the support we would move it around to try and angle it correctly so it would bounce from mirror to mirror. I found that it worked better when it was being angled a little bit up. The laser was finicky though, if you left it on too long it would burn out. Sadly our laser burnt out quite fast even though we didn’t even use it for that long. 

Finally, after finishing up the board and adding the final decorations we ended up with this:

Then the next day we transferred it over to Mr. Grosses room and added smoke to it. The reason for this is because when the laser’s on you can’t see it very well, but when you add smoke and turn the lights off you’re able to see the beams of light very well. Sadly, our laser died so we didn’t get very many good photos but here are some of the ones we took.

I think that we were able to prove the law of reflection and the pythagorean theorem. Even though our triangle didn’t work well in the dark we did get the light to bounce of all mirrors in the correct angle and direction.

Here is a mind map of some of the things I wondered at the start of the year and then I answered some of my questions and put down some things I learned.

.｡.:*☆Answering the core competencies☆*:.｡.

1. Questioning and predicting:  Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest

I think I used my class time effectively and I payed attention to what was being explained, questioning myself along the way. For example, I questioned if  using a pythagorean triple would make it easier to create a laser triangle outline. 

2. Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms

I think I did ok in this since I understood the simulators yet I wasn’t the best at using them. But I was helpful when creating the display which was hands-on. 

3. Applying and innovating: Cooperatively design projects

When our laser burnt out we had to disassemble our display. We worked together quickly and got it done fast. We had to do it twice but each time it worked out fine, and our design never got compromised by our misshaps. We listened to each other’s design ideas and I feel each group member’s “voice” was heard when creating it because everyone pitched in. 

“How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design?”

Does “The Ring of Flames” pique your interest? Does it sound like a board game? Because that is exactly what it is and is a result of Gwen, Caitlin and I brainstorming and creating a game that involved probability and tectonic plates (We had a lot of fun throughout this, especially with the paper cutter.)

Taking what we learned about tectonic theory and probability we created a board game that could be played with 2-4 players. The goal of the game is not to get to the end first but to get the most points by the time everyone reaches the end the trail of volcanic islands.

But we didn’t start with that game, first we had a test class were we made drafts of ideas we had. My group for this was Caitlin and Mackenzie, our idea was Slug Island (chosen by Caitlin) here is a photo of our ideas.  

As you can see they needed work, and we realized they were confusing because we rushed through the process. It became really messy and we didn’t have a clear idea. 

The creation of the actual game was challenging since Gwen and I had never worked together (we had different groups for this game) and we each had many different ideas (Caitlin wasn’t involved yet, I’m not excluding her). We had to really compromise with each other and went through discussions around whether to use dice, cards, figures, rocks, etc. Luckily, we were able to find common ground between all of our ideas, starting with the idea that snake eyes on a dice meant getting points. This then lead to creating point cards for the game and bringing in an element of chance with the dice because you could end up with zero dice, one or two for gaming points.

 Finally after picking through many ideas we ended up with these notes

Then finally Caitlin showed up at the end of our note taking (took her long enough) and we started finessing the rules. Thankfully, Caitlin was able to use her artistic skills and create great visual elements for our board game and our rules page (see below). Then we started creating the physical game, our theme was to have the characters (beautiful rocks with smiley faces) advance along a trail of volcanoes, but along the way they encounter natural disasters. In a way it is like a story, in that characters are trying to reach the end but use points as lives to boost their survival. For the mathematical part of our game we had the players advance using cards and then rolling dice. There was a lot of probability when rolling the dice because you could either pick between rolling for something with a higher risk but more reward or choose lower reward but a better chance at getting the points. That also includes chance because who knows what the dice are going to roll. Here are some examples of that cards (sorry they are upside down they where being finicky when I made the slideshow)

Curricular competencies

#1 

Evaluating: Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence

In the particular one I think we could have expanded on since we didn’t have a lot mathematical evidence in our board game. I think we could have added some more probability or made it easier for the players to risk there rolls. For example on each of our volcanoes it indicated how many dice you could have but most of them where 1 so I think we could have made that better since most of our point cards needed two for the larger point sums. For the tectonic plate evidence I think my group did ok with that since on most of our advance cards we had a reason for why they would have to move forward or backwards. An examples are SLAB PULL you miss a turn since you got pulled under neath because of gravity. I agree with us being between emerging/developing and accomplished.

#2 

Questioning and predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest

I think my group did well on this since we spent a while writing our rules, set up and what its going to look like we were able to speed threw creating it. We knew how many cards we needed to cut (we cut like 1000+ though but we only need 60ish) and we assigned roles to each person. We got our game done quite quickly and played threw it a couple times. Since our group pitched in equally we all where into it so we all enjoyed creating it together and I think that helped pique our interest about this project. I think we where accomplished.

#3 

Understanding and solving: Develop, demonstrate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving

Again since we spent overtime planning we knew where our math and tectonic plate learning landed in our game. When creating the cards Gwen and Caitlin made sure there was a variety of different probability outcomes ( I was colouring the volcanoes on the game) some where hard and some where easy. One of the cards was roll two dice (very hard to do I know), well another was roll a double. 

Coming back to the driving question of this project, “How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design?”, in games the thematic element is like the framework of the game as it give it a backstory. As a simple example in Candy Land you’re trying to reach the end to see the king in his candy palace. The theme in the game Catan is people settling into a knew land for the first time and have to look for resources. Without a theme a board game would be very boring and it gives purpose to the mathematical elements. Strategy, Probability, risk, and chance are 4 main ways that mathematical elements are infused in games. For example in the Game of Life there is probability right from the start, you can either chose career or collage. Career gives 7 college offer more salary and career options but it takes longer and puts you in debt, well career is a shorter path to start getting out of the entry area but limited options in career and salary. Also there is a part in the game called risky road where you can either chose to play it safe or go onto a risky road but you may lose money but also gain.

In conclusion I think I like simple card games the best since they are easy to bring and pack up. Also you can do a lot with them and it includes probability and chance as well. I think if I ever made another board game it would be much easier since I know how to add fun elements and make sure there is risk and probability involved.