Coding, atoms and kinetic molecular theory. That is the short way of describe this scimatics project. The hard way is this.

What is the project?

The final project was to program a game or simulator that shows how matter behaves. I chose to do it with a simulator that show how Neon moves in the three states of matter. You can choose which state you want, and it’ll show you the atoms moving as if the were in that state and the heat at which that would happen with neon.

Mind map 

This is a mindmap of some thoughts I had about the question “how can the kinetic molecular theory and atomic theory explain the  behaviour of matter?” In the bottom right you can see how I answered the questions I had before the project start.

Curricular Competencies

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

I spent all of my class time well and took quite a while trying to learn how to code on scratch. I was interested in the coding because there was a lot of opportunities for me to make something cool, but I wasn’t really that good at it.

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

I used the bhor model of the atom in my simulator, and I had a lot of science in my sim. It showed that science well too, with examples like the thermometer in the top left corner showing what heat, the atoms didn’t show a perfect representation of real life atoms, but mostly it showed how it works.

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

I didn’t do well on this one because I didn’t make a game, it was buggy and It only had one atom. I didn’t really ask for help, which is an area I could improve apron, but the one person I asked didn’t have a clue.

Thoughts on the project

I would’ve done better on this project if my idea wasn’t so basic. I could’ve built a game, which a lot of people did and it didn’t look hard at all. I took quite a while to learn how to use scratch, but the tutorials were helpful. Once I learned how to use it I still made mistakes, but I could fix most of them. During spring break I added a little start screen and wanted to add another atom to choose from. At some point when I was making the simulator look better I created a bug that I couldn’t fix. I tried to fix it for the next few classes but all my attempts where in vain, so my final product is still buggy. I also lost the opportunity to add more atoms to choose from for to turn it into a game because of these bugs. I could’ve done better but I still did well and I learned a lot from this project and enjoyed it a lot.

Link to my simulator 👇

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/650063054/

Thanks for reading