Prove It! A game of tectonics

I made a board game. Let me explain.

For my second scimatics (science and mathematics) project I got a partner (Charlie R), and we were asked to make a board game about tectonic plates. In order to start building the game, we had to know basics about tectonic plates. With that the building knowledge phase began.

Experiment highlight!

The rest building knowledge is just textbook stuff, so I’m not going to write about it. What I am going to talk about is the convection experiment. 

In this experiment, we were trying to see convection occur in person. To do this, we got two beakers filled with water; one that was red and one that was blue. The red one was hot and the blue one was cold. We poured them carefully into a rectangular bucket with a divider in the middle. Hot on the left, cold on the right. When we took out the divider and watched carefully. After thirty seconds the bucket had two even layers of red on top and blue on the bottom. Throughout the process you could see the red colour flowing upwards and the blue falling downwards. 

To get show you, here is a video demonstrating the experiment:

Canada Science and Technology Museum https://youtu.be/Ak9CBB1bTcc 

This happens because of convection. Convection describes how hot things are less dense than cold things. This makes the hot water float.

How does this relate to tectonic plates?

It also happens in the mantle, which is one of the layers of earth. The mantle closer to the core of the earth is heated up more ny radiation from the core. That makes it move up above the colder magma on top of it. After some time it will cool down and warmer magma will come from the lower parts of the mantle and push the cold magma down. Once it reaches the lower parts of the mantle it starts warming up again, repeating the process.

Driving question:

How are thematic and mathematic elements used in game design?

As with all of our projects, we have a driving question. The answer that comes to mind quickest to answer this question is the probability. There were many uses of probability in my game, for instance, we had a dice roll every turn which resulted in player getting/loosing money/funding. The chart below is also in the rules, linked at the bottom.

As you can see in the chart, the probability of each occurrence is 1/6. Looking closely at possible results, there is a 16.6% chance of loosing funding, a 33.3% chance of getting no funding, and a 16.6% chance of getting 1, 2 or 3 funding. 

Our main theme for the game was scientist researcher game. The board was a map of a coast that had many research sites. Trenches, volcanos, and other tectonic events where drawn on it.  You would go around and research the sites and get points for each site you’ve researched. I think every game has a theme to it. These elements are used to give the game a feel. The theme also has a lot to do with the colours. Our game had lots of blue and green.

Growth MindNode

This MindNode has questions written on it from the start of the project, and the answers were written at the end of the project. There are also some things that I’ve learned written among them. 

Developing competencies

There are three competencies we were working on in this project: 

Evaluating: 

Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence.

Questioning and predicting: 

Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

Understanding and solving: 

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

I have address those as follow.

#1 Evaluating: Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence.

One of the criteria for the project was to include ten science concepts. Me and my partner agreed that we could show the concepts in the science concepts in the form of trivia. 

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

To show this, all you had to do was pay attention in class and use our work time efficiently. I did well on this one until I got to the building process. My partner and I didn’t have any real plans, and our idea wasn’t finished. Once we finished our idea, we were off and worked really well.

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

The way to show this competency was by using and showing probability in every turn of your game. We had dice rolls every turn, chances to pull luckier cards out of the deck, and the chance of rolling a short research time. This one was the easiest to show in the game.

Game rules:

Click on the link to see the complete game rules: Bland 19

Thank you for reading