There has been a spot of role reversal in my house of late. I’ve been at the Minecraft again and my kids are complaining.
A while back Microsoft asked me and Joel Mills to work on the latest update of their amazingly popular game. And that update now includes a whole load of chemistry features!!
The Minecraft chemistry update makes it possible to mix subatomic particles together and create elements from hydrogen to oganesson as well as the isotopes in between. Or you can do a spot of elemental analysis on your Minecraft blocks (with a reasonable approximation to what you might find in reality). And then it is possible to combine elements and manufacture new compounds. These add some nice new features to the game. I particularly like the way you can add metal salts to the torch and they burn with the appropriate colours. The elephant’s toothpaste, glow sticks and helium balloons are also really nice additions.
The Element Constructor
The Compound Creator
The chemistry update is part of Minecraft Education Edition (MC:EE), a version of the game designed for use in the classroom (but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a licence yourself, costing the princely sum of $5 per year). MC:EE is packed with useful features for teachers that many of them would probably like in the real world (with a click of the mouse students are instantly frozen, muted or teleported back to exactly where the teacher wants them).
My contribution to the project has been to advice on the in-game chemistry, a set of lesson plans and a bespoke Minecraft chemistry teaching lab (for which Minecraft Global Mentor Joel Mills should get the credit).
The Minecraft Teaching Lab
Our lessons cover everything from lab safety (in which the students encounter a dangerous lab environment and have to spot the hazards and then reduce the risk of accidents by sorting it out) to a spot of analytical chemistry (using the game’s new material reducer).
Microsoft have done a cracking job of integrating chemistry in their virtual play world. But they are very much aware that the game isn’t (and can never be) and accurate chemistry simulator. Instead it is really designed to stimulate an interest in the subject. Which is why we also included lessons that encourage students to compare how the rules that govern the Minecraft world differ from that of the real world.
How about a spot of halloween chemistry? With nice simple explanations for the trick or treaters.
Cinder toffee!!
You’ll need:
Sugar
Golden syrup
A jam/jelly thermometer
Bicarbonate of soda
Grease proof paper
A baking tray
A saucepan
Safety:
The toffee mix gets very hot, be careful when handling in and make sure there’s an adult helping.
What to do:
1. Weigh out 100grams (3.5 oz) of sugar into the saucepan.
2. Add 3 tablespoons of syrup
3. Heat the mixture on a stove whilst stirring it.
4. Check the temperature of the mixture.
5. Carry on heating until it reaches 145-150oC (293-302).
6. Quickly stir in 1 teaspoon of bicarb. It will suddenly bubble up.
7. Now pour it into the baking tray, lined with grease proof paper.
8. Leave it to cool.
9. Break it all up (best done with a hammer) and enjoy!
What’s going on?
So that’s a nice simple recipe for a tasty treat but where is the science?
First off there’s the sugar and syrup. There are actually loads of different types of sugars, the stuff you put in your coffee and the granulated sugar used here is sucrose. It looks like this:
Sucrose
Golden syrup is a mixture of water, sucrose and two other sugars called fructose and glucose. They look like this:
Fructose
Glucose
Sucrose is actually made up of a fructose and glucose molecule that have been joined together.
So why do we need these three sugars to make the toffee? Well, when they are mixed all together they interfere with crystal formation. To explain how this works let’s represent each of the sugars with a different shape.
If we have one type of sugar then the molecules can pack together nice and neatly, like in the diagram. And that is exactly what happens in a crystal. But if you mix them all together they can’t form ordered patterns and so you don’t get crystals forming.
So if we tried to make the toffee with just one type of sugar then we’d end up with crystals forming which make for hard dense toffee (more like a boiled sweet). But by using 3 different sugars the crystals don’t form and instead you end up with a brittle, crunchy, glass like toffee.
Then there’s the bicarbonate of soda. You normally put this in cakes to make them rise. That’s because when you heat up the bicarb it turns to carbon dioxide gas (hence the bubbles in your cakes). The same thing happens here. When you spoon the bicarb into the hot sugar it almost instantly gets converted to carbon dioxide and causes the mixture to foam up.
Hope you enjoy the toffee and whilst you do you can find out more about the science of cinder toffer here.
Children should be playing more computer games in school. That idea might enrage you if you think kids today already spend too much time staring at screens or if you are already sick of your offspring’s incessant prattling about fighting zombies and the like. But hear me out.
Specifically, I think more children should be playing the online game Minecraft. Minecraft is like a digital version of Lego in which players can construct everything from simple houses to intricate fantasy cathedrals and even complex machines such as mechanical computers. There is no intrinsic aim to the game. Like all good ways of sparking a child’s imagination, it requires them to set their own goals.
But Minecraft is much more than just a game. Used carefully it can also be a powerful educational tool. It allows young people to create and explore places that are completely inaccessible by other means. Within the blocky world, they can roam around historical sites, delve into the geology beneath their feet or fly through the chambers of a heart, and much more besides.
The rich resources of these virtual worlds, coupled with the educational version of the game, allow teachers to immerse young people in a comfortable but exciting learning environment. Minecraft has the ability to bring just about any conceivable structure to the classroom, bedroom or sofa of every player.
Creating complex structures
One of the types of structure I’m particularly passionate is that of proteins. These tiny molecular machines fascinate me. They control just about every biological process in your cells and knit your body together. From replicating your DNA and forming the bases of your skin, hair and connective tissue, to digesting food, fighting infections and transporting oxygen around your blood, proteins do it all.
And just like man-made machines, proteins have to be precisely built if they are to do their jobs. A small part out of place, whether a nut in a car left loose by an errant mechanic, or an atom in a protein mutated by UV light, can cause the whole mechanism to fail. Sometimes this will have disastrous consequences: a failed brake in your vehicle, or cancerous cells in your body.
You don’t have to be interested in biochemistry and its implications to appreciate that proteins are beautiful wonders of nature, just as you can appreciate the elegant design of a car without knowing how it works. The difference is that you can see wonderfully designed cars all the time. But where could you marvel at the structure of a protein? How about Minecraft?
Thanks to the work of my chemistry students and the support of the Royal Society of Chemistry, that is now possible. MolCraft is a world where the majestic helices of myoglobin rise above you. Where you can explore this massive molecule and its iron centre that carries oxygen around your muscles. Or, if you prefer you can fly down a pore through which water molecules normally flow across cell membranes.
Myoglobin in Minecraft.
In MolCraft, anyone can explore the building blocks of these incredible natural nano-machines. You can discover how just 20 chemical building blocks can result in the astonishing diversity of structures and functions that are required to hold living things together.
Histidine as seen in Minecraft.
Histidine as seen by a chemist.
There are plenty of accessible molecular visualisation tools, both physical and virtual. But now we’ve used Minecraft to turn the process of exploring and learning about molecules into a game. MolCraft contains a scavenger hunt, quizzes and clues dotted around the world that can be solved with the help of information found during players’ explorations.
Imagine a science lesson where the class is let lose in Minecraft with instructions to find a set of objects hidden on key parts of molecules. Upon retrieving them the teacher will know which molecules each student has explored and what questions they may have answered to find the objects. All this time, the children think they have just been playing a game.
As well as making MolCraft available to download for free, we’re also working on ways to further integrate the software into education. One idea is to turn it into a complete online learning environment, where students can complete coursework, write assignments, take part in quizzes or help developing other teaching resources, all within the game. Their tutors can then see their work and send them feedback while still immersed in the Minecraft world.
Posing in front of glycine.
Using Minecraft for teaching doesn’t have to stop at proteins. Our other Minecraft-related projects are allowing students to explore and understand deserted medieval villages or reconstruct the architecture of Hull and there’s much more in the pipeline. The only limits are the imagination of teachers and students.
As a kid I loved my chemistry set. Many an afternoon was whiled away in my dad’s shed, totally ignoring the set’s instructions and randomly mixing the contents of the various bottles. To be honest I can’t really remember learning much chemistry, beyond the fact that it was possible to generate some pretty noxious fumes.
I guess its that sort of behaviour that rang the death knell for those sets of old. Today’s high street chemistry offerings seem to have been sanitised to the point of tedium, whilst some even proclaim to be chemical-free (shudder).
But there is hope. MEL science have launched a product that brings the chemistry set smack into the 21st Century. And I was pretty excited to get my hands on one.
MEL chemistry starter pack and 5 experiment boxes.
MEL chemistry is supplied via a subscription model. The starter pack is £29.95, and includes some glassware, safety specs, a solid fuel burner, a google-cardboard VR clone, a tray, a neat macro lens that clips onto a smartphone and other bits and bobs. On the face of things this looks a little steep, but you should also take into account a really very good IOS/Android app, which shows various 3D representations (when used with the VR goggles) of all the reagents you are likely to encounter later.
Tin set unboxed
All the experiments are sold separately, at £9.95 per experiment set, with 3 delivered each month. The idea being that you each month you receive a new kit. This seems really very reasonable to me, and is just the sort of model that maintains the excitement. Fresh chemistry coming through the door each month should keep up the interest.
Each experiment was accompanied by a very good instruction card and a detailed online page. The webpage goes into far more depth that you would expect for the target 12+ age group. But its all clear and well written. A very minor criticism is the commentary to the videos, sometimes the heavy (Russian?) accent makes things a little difficult to follow.
We (a small Lorch and I), cracked open the ‘Tin set’ and fired up the accompanying video. Everything is very well packaged with a lot of thought going into how kids should dispense solutions safely. My lab assistant, for this experiment, has quite a reputation for knocking fluids flying, but in this case, and despite a couple of up ended bottles, nothing was spilt.
So over to the real action. The ‘Tin set’ contains two experiments. First, the tin hedgehog, which simply involves dropping a zinc pellet into a solution of tin (II) chloride. Tin crystals quickly form on the pellet, these are quite small and would be difficult to see without the help of the clip-on macro lens. So with the expanding crystals captured live on my phone’s screen my co-experimenter was quite impressed.
Then we moved on to the tin dendrites. Again the method was easy for my pre-teen helper to follow. And this time, as the beautiful branches of tin struck out across the petri dish there was some genuine amazement in the room.
Tin hedgehog, as seen via the kit’s macro lens.
Tin dendrites
So far so very impressed. By linking all the experiments with excellent online and smart resources they should really engage the budding chemist and ensure they learn a heck of a lot more than just how to gas themselves. In short they are fun, safe and bang up to date.
I’ve got previews of another 4 experiments to try and will let you know what I think. If they are up to the same standard I’ll be signing up for the other 34.
EDIT: Note, a previous version stated that the sets cost £9.95 per month. This should have read £9.95 per experiment set. The text has been altered to correct this.
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