Welcome back to another scimatics blog post. Today I am going to be talking about our later project “Chemistry Coding”. This was a great project where we got to learn a bunch of new skills including some coding with Scratch.

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What Was This Project❓

The driving question for this project was “How can state of matter be explained by the kinetic molecular theory (KMT) and the atomic theory?”. As you can probably tell by the driving question this project was all about matter and these two theories.

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What is the KMT and atomic theory 🤔

The KMT is the theory that states all matter is made up of small particles that are constantly in motion. The atomic theory shows the atoms that make up matter as well as what makes each of the atoms. Remember this because these two theories are import fr the end result of this project.

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Some Things We Did 📝

Project Start Mind Map 💭

At the beginning of the project we created mind maps to breakdown what we knew, what we didn’t know, and what questions we had about the project. These are something that we do at the beginning of every project in scimatics and are really helpful at the beginning to organize your thoughts.

Milestone 4 💎

For milestone 4 we listed out what we were going to include in our game as well as how the KMT was included. It was very helpful to have a plan while I was designing my game so I knew what things I needed to include. I did a lot of the stuff I wanted to do but ended up doing a game instead of a simulator, which the plan was built around doing.

Final Game 🕹

The end goal of this project was to create a game about matter that included the KMT and atomic theory. This was really fun as I got to do some coding with Scratch. I made a game where you had to dodge the different particles that were bouncing around. In the game you can chose to either be an atom or a molecule and you can choose between H2O, CO2, Iodine, and Einsteinium. You can also select whether you would like to play in a mixture where there are different particles coming at you. There are lots of other things I included when you actually play the game. Instead of me explaining all of these I suggest you play the game and find them for yourself.

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Competencies 📝

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

I used all my class time efficiently for my work. You can see that in the level of coding found in my game. Most of the coding was done in class with a few exceptions when there were problems with the code I couldn’t figure out during class time.

Scientific communication: Communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies.

I used scientific language throughout my finished scratch game. Some examples would be different states of matter being listed and the mixture button. I displayed the molecules and atoms in a scientifically accurate way in my game including labeling the different elements included in each of the molecules.

Reasoning and analyzing:  Use logic and patterns (including coding) to solve puzzles and play games.

You can see the different logic for my game labeled clearly when you view the code for my game. There is different logic being used in areas like the buttons, timer, change in speed of the particles, etc.

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An Area I Struggled 😬

This project included a bunch of difficult areas. There was lots of names to memorize, whether it was the name of a person or the name of a change of state. The absolute most difficult part of this project was coding the game. It took a lot of patience, trouble shooting, and required me to learn some new skills. In the end it was worth all the time and effort for the cool end result.

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Final Thoughts 🧠

This was overall a fun project where I got to learn lots of new skills. We managed to answer the driving question through the learning we did about the kinetic molecular theory and the atomic theory and showed it through our games which explain matter using these theories. This might be one of the best projects yet in PLP and I highly suggest playing my game. It was surprisingly fun to play and maybe you can find some bugs in it. Have fun playing my game and I’ll see you on my next post.

Project End Mind Map