As our term one Scimatics course comes to a close, it is time to review what we’ve learned in the subject! After our Metaphor Machines unit was finished, we began our Chemistry Stories unit. The name is pretty self-explanatory; we learned about chemistry, and then using our knowledge of it, we wrote stories! That’s a generalized explanation of the chemistry stories unit.

To be more specific, we began with learning about matter. We did some textbook work, and read about the different types of matter, such as pure substances, which are elements and compounds. These ideas were the backbone of our unit in chemistry! We did some questions on identifying what is and isn’t matter, and started into looking at atoms. In a simulator, building different types of atoms by removing or adding protons, neutrons and electrons was how we got introduced to the periodic table and its elements. The periodic table has many elements and many ways that these elements can form compounds. I believe that most of our time in this Scimatics unit was about learning how to form proper compounds and how this occurs. Starting into this, we learned about ionic bonding, and made small Keynote animations with characters that represented different elements to portray the ionic bonds. After, we moved onto covalent bonds, and did some similar activities. 

All of this was preparation for our next big project— the chemistry stories themselves. I was paired with Lucy, and our task was to write a story based off of our chosen compounds and turn them into characters. After the story had been written, we had to complete an animation of this story. The animation was probably one of my favourite parts of this unit! Lucy and I worked so hard to complete an animation in the small period of time we were given and I believe it turned out quite well. Our characters, Lydia Lithium and Flynn Fluorine, were the stars in our tale called “Lithium Fluoride: A Rom-Com”. It was very fun to write this sort of comedic story and animate it. We even wrote the script as a regular TV or movie script would be set up! I am proud of all the tedious work that went into completing this stage of our unit. 

After the two-person chemistry stories were finished, we came to the final and biggest challenge for the chemistry stories: combining them! Lucy and I were put with Sam, Caleb, and Jackson, and we were tasked with putting our ideas together into one new story. Luckily, we found that the result of our brainstorming came up with a pretty cool new story. Simply called ‘Electron Thief’, I will show you the summarized version that I wrote: 

“It begins with the character Harry Hydrogen getting robbed by Olivia Oxygen, a petty thief. Harry is distraught, because he needed the stolen money to pay back Corey Chlorine for a favour. Harry and his sister Sophia Sodium come up with a plan to catch Olivia at the Periodic Gala, which Olivia will be attending. Sophia, who has a secret crush on Corey, asks him to the gala while Harry carries out the plan. At the gala, Corey sees Harry and becomes suspicious, so Sophia lets him in on what happened to Harry and his money, which ultimately saves Harry, because Corey is the one who catches Olivia at the last minute as she is escaping. The police take her away, and Harry retrieves his money and returns it to Corey. Sophia confesses her love to Corey and finds that he feels the same way, and the three all stay at the gala and have a good time.” 

The theme statement of our story is all about teamwork. “When we work together, we can achieve anything.” This side of the story is more in the Humanities category, so I won’t go into detail about it. The basis of our story remained the same with the science included in it.

After we had finished writing up these new stories, we are now presented with a new task to be carried out on Exhibition Night! During this exhibition, which actually hasn’t taken place yet, we are going to experience the coolest part of our unit! Each group got assigned a room, in which we will have to set up an immersive experience of a certain section of our story. My group chose the gala to be our location, so we will be turning our room into a gala for exhibition! Again, this is more of the Humanities side, but on the door of our room we also will include Bohr diagrams and a scientific explanation of our story. 

Written by Lucy.

In conclusion, our chemistry stories unit has been super fun and a very creative way to learn about the periodic table, matter, atoms, compounds, etc.! I’m so excited to see what is to come in Scimatics and I thoroughly enjoyed this unit.