Our Chemical Dominoes board game was called "The Race to Meme Mountain." The goal was to climb the mountain to be able to roll the "Barrel of Memes" to activate the LED. To build our board, we first started by mapping out how many spaces we would need, and which spaces would give good and bad cards when landed on. Then we cut out our sloped parts of the board, as well as the background mountain, from cardboard. Next we assembled our wooden slope for the barrel to roll down. After that we painted everything, and added some minor improvements, like cardboard walls to make sure the barrel doesn't roll way from its path and the pattern of the barrel itself. After I designed all of them, Noah created all our "Feels Good Man" and "Feels Bad Man" cards. And the last thing we did in the creation of our project was assemble the materials needed for the reactions.
After passing one of the three squares with yellow dots, an "Inhuman Reaction" (another meme reference) occurs. We had 3 different types of reactions, one for each space. The first reaction was our single replacement reaction, which is when two substances switch one ion to form their products (EX: AB + C --> AC + B). Our reaction was between Aluminum and Copper(II)Chloride, which formed Copper and Aluminum Chloride. This appeared to create "rust" on the aluminum. Our second reaction was a ouble displacement one, which is where two compounds switch two ions to form their new products (AB + CD --> AD + BC). We used Potassium Chromate and Copper Nitrate to form Copper Chromate and Potassium Nitrate, which made a brownish precipitate mixture. Our third reaction was a production of a gas, which is pretty self-explanatory. Our production of a gas reaction was Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) combining with Acetic Acid (vinegar) to create Sodium Acetate, Water, and Carbon Dioxide. We also needed a physical change of energy in our game, and for us that was the Meme Barrel rolling down its slope to hit the button. Our required lighting of an LED was activated by this. The LED required a circuit to connect it to the button and a battery, which is something we learned last year.
Two things I think we did really well were problem solve and invent new ideas. When we needed to come up with a physical change of energy, we built a ramp, barrel, and circuit that would activate in a couple hours. Also when we were starting out the project we had an overabundance of ideas. A game board based on the ocean, storming a castle, and the election were all considered, but ultimately we landed on memes as the theme. Some things we could have done better would be time management and painting. We waited far longer than we should have to begin gathering and thinking of chemical reactions. As for painting, some of the lines were uneven and could have used a ruler or tape or something to keep them as lines.