4 ms·

Science-based games and explorable explanations

68 points by stared 2y ago

Lerc 2y ago
There was a flash game I played where you did (maybe pseudo) protein folding. It gave you a desired shape and you had to pick bases to make it go together. Once made it would give you some estimates on temperature-range etc. and you could tweak the bases to attempt to improve the temperature stability without making it go haywire. I can't remember what it was called, but I had fun with it. I wonder what happened to it in a post Flash world.
- jacobolus 2y ago
  You might find https://fold.it https://fold.it interesting.
  - Lerc 2y ago
    I think that might be its successor. I managed to track that back to the game I played It was called eterna https://eternagame.org/ https://eternagame.org/
1oooqooq 2y ago
there's zero examples of this employed successfully.
- cyberpunk 2y ago
  What about kerbal?
- stared 2y ago
  Minecraft is LEGO bricks for the modern age - and, well, it is popular. As the blog post mentioned, "SpaceChem and Kerbal Space Program sold over 1 million and over 2 million copies on Steam." If you mean "putting a game in a curriculum so that people will be forced to play it" - please don't.
  - 1oooqooq 2y ago
    name one single game that people will play willingly where one single fact is learned. none of those qualify.
    - heisenzombie 2y ago
      “Facts”? To take the Kerbal example, you could go read in a textbook that: “The Hohmann manouver is the most energy-efficient two-impulse maneuver for transferring between two coplanar circular orbits sharing a common focus. The Hohmann transfer is an elliptical orbit tangent to both circles on its apse line... The periapsis and apoapsis of the transfer ellipse are the radii of the inner and outer circles, respectively.” You could even memorise that fact and regurgitate it on the exam. But, speaking as someone with a physics degree, there was nothing like playing Kerbal to get a really intuitive feel for orbital mechanics. To go from “oh yeah, I vaguely remember something called a Hohmann transfer and I guess I could do some maths to work out the specifics if you give me some time” to “well, obviously….”
- lupire 2y ago
  The article is almost entirely a list of successful examples.
  - 1oooqooq 2y ago
    of learning what??? successfull example of empty marketing
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
joelignaatius 2y ago
[flagged]
kemmishtree 2y ago
i have to leave this here www.molecularreality.com
- lupire 2y ago
  Unfortunately that doesn't help because MR makes no attempt to explain what their product does. The website just has the thing you can buy, described in terms the average college educated adult has never learned, and a privacy-disrespecting chatbot.
madacol 2y ago
Interesting link in the page https://github.com/stared/science-based-games-list https://github.com/stared/science-based-games-list

68 points by stared 2y ago

Lerc 2y ago

There was a flash game I played where you did (maybe pseudo) protein folding. It gave you a desired shape and you had to pick bases to make it go together. Once made it would give you some estimates on temperature-range etc. and you could tweak the bases to attempt to improve the temperature stability without making it go haywire. I can't remember what it was called, but I had fun with it. I wonder what happened to it in a post Flash world.

jacobolus 2y ago
You might find https://fold.it https://fold.it interesting.
- Lerc 2y ago
  I think that might be its successor. I managed to track that back to the game I played It was called eterna https://eternagame.org/ https://eternagame.org/

1oooqooq 2y ago

there's zero examples of this employed successfully.

cyberpunk 2y ago
What about kerbal?
stared 2y ago
Minecraft is LEGO bricks for the modern age - and, well, it is popular. As the blog post mentioned, "SpaceChem and Kerbal Space Program sold over 1 million and over 2 million copies on Steam." If you mean "putting a game in a curriculum so that people will be forced to play it" - please don't.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  name one single game that people will play willingly where one single fact is learned. none of those qualify.
  - heisenzombie 2y ago
    “Facts”? To take the Kerbal example, you could go read in a textbook that: “The Hohmann manouver is the most energy-efficient two-impulse maneuver for transferring between two coplanar circular orbits sharing a common focus. The Hohmann transfer is an elliptical orbit tangent to both circles on its apse line... The periapsis and apoapsis of the transfer ellipse are the radii of the inner and outer circles, respectively.” You could even memorise that fact and regurgitate it on the exam. But, speaking as someone with a physics degree, there was nothing like playing Kerbal to get a really intuitive feel for orbital mechanics. To go from “oh yeah, I vaguely remember something called a Hohmann transfer and I guess I could do some maths to work out the specifics if you give me some time” to “well, obviously….”
lupire 2y ago
The article is almost entirely a list of successful examples.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  of learning what??? successfull example of empty marketing

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

joelignaatius 2y ago

[flagged]

kemmishtree 2y ago

i have to leave this here www.molecularreality.com

lupire 2y ago
Unfortunately that doesn't help because MR makes no attempt to explain what their product does. The website just has the thing you can buy, described in terms the average college educated adult has never learned, and a privacy-disrespecting chatbot.

madacol 2y ago

Interesting link in the page https://github.com/stared/science-based-games-list https://github.com/stared/science-based-games-list