For this project, my group and I made a board game that included chemical reactions. In our game, players chose one out of three paths: wizard, warrior, or sorcerer. This game can be played with one to four people. Players move forward one space each turn and then draw a card. The cards tell you to move forward, backward, skip a turn, etc. For example, "You eat a mysterious berry and your toe falls off. Move backwards two spaces to find it." On each path there is an x with a house next to it. In each house there is a chemical (either ferric chloride, sodium carbonate, or potassium chromate). When you reach the end of the path, you mix the chemical with cupric nitrate, which forms a precipitate. Then players go onto the next layer of our game: The River of Life. In this layer, there is only one x, at which players get to choose a metal: magnesium or copper. At the end of the level, players use both metals they collects to do a redox reaction that lights an LED. On the final layer, we have five crucibles. In each there is a metal salt with flammable alcohol. We lit a string that connected each of the crucibles to form a chain of fire that turns five different colors. Our game was called the Game of Life because each level represents a part of your life. The ground is your training, the river is the rest of your life, and the top is a viking funeral celebrating the end of your life.
We had to include a single and double replacement reaction, a production of gas, the lighting of an LED, and chemical and physical changes of energy. Our single replacement reaction was also the lighting of our LED. It is a redox reaction in which one side is losing electrons, while the other is gaining them. The electrons are traveling between a beaker of magnesium sulfate with magnesium in it and a beaker of copper sulfate with copper in it. This electron transfer is what makes it a single replacement reaction. They travel back and forth across a bridge to create a circuit which lights the LED. We had three double replacement reactions which all formed different precipitants. They were ferric chloride with cupric nitrate, sodium carbonate with cupric nitrate, and potassium chromate with cupric nitrate. At the end of our game, we had a combustion reaction that was our production of gas. We made a fire with alcohol that produced carbon dioxide and turned different colors because of the metal salts. Our physical change was the igniting of the flame and all of the other reactions were chemical.
Below are pictures of each layer of our board game, along with safety precautions for some of the more dangerous chemicals.
Concepts
element - primary constituents of matter that can't be broken down into smaller substances. We used elements in our project to create our reactions. atom - the smallest component of an element having the chemical properties of the element. We used this in our project because atoms make up everything. electron - a particle with a charge of negative electricity. We used this in our project because electrons are part of atoms. neutron - a particle with a neutral charge. We used this in our project because neutrons are part of atoms. proton - a particle with a charge of positive electricity. We used this in our project because protons are part of atoms. ion - an atom or molecule with a net electric charge due to the loss or gain of one or more electrons. We used ions in our project in our reactions. cation - a positive ion. We used this in our project because it is part of an ionic compound. anion - a negative ion. We used this in our project because it is part of an ionic compound. ionic compounds - a chemical compound composed of ions held together by electrostatic forces termed ionic bonding. We used this in our project to create our reactions. single replacement reaction - a type of chemical reaction where an element reacts with a compound and takes the place of another element in that compound. We used this in our project because we made this reaction (kind of). double replacement reaction - a type of chemical reaction where two compounds react, and the cations and the anions of the two reactants switch places, forming two new compounds or products. We used this in our project because we made this reaction. combustion reaction - an exothermic reaction in which something reacts with oxygen. We used this in our project because we made this reaction. synthesis reaction - a type of reaction in which multiple reactants combine to form a single product. This is a reaction that we didn't make in this project. decomposition reaction - a type of chemical reaction in which a single compound breaks down into two or more elements or new compounds. This is a reaction that we didn't make in this project. Activity series - a list of metals ranked in order of decreasing reactivity to displace hydrogen gas from water and acid solutions that can be used to predict which elements will react with each other. We used this to plan for our reactions. Solubility Guidelines - a set of rules for predicting the state of the result of reactions. We used this to plan for our reactions. Redox reaction - a type of chemical reaction that involves a transfer of electrons between two species. This is the reaction that we substituted for a single replacement reaction.
Reflection
I enjoyed doing this project because it allowed us to be creative while also putting what we're learning to use. The best parts of this project were definitely the last and first day we worked on the project. The last day, we were working super hard to finish everything and when we did, we were left with a really great project. It was entertaining and looked cool and was a success at our Game Night. The first day we started, everyone in the group had so many ideas and it was fun to think of all the possibilities that we could do with our game. The middle portion of our project was the hardest part of the project, because we had so many ideas and didn't have any idea how to achieve what we wanted. We worked slowly for the majority of the build days, but at the end we pulled it together. Another low point was towards the end of the project, when we were testing reactions. We were trying to find the best way to use metal salts to create a rainbow fire. We used a large, glass bowl and put way too much alcohol and metal salts inside. This led to a very cool-looking and colorful fire, but also to the bowl shattering. This string of poor decisions helped us find out what didn't work, and we didn't know how to get the result that we wanted. During this project, I learned a lot about chemistry and put what I was learning into practice. I learned about why reactions occur and how they occur. I also learned about what different kinds of reactions there are and what they look like and are.