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Mike Cross
United States
Atkinson
New Hampshire
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I teach chemistry at a community college and I'm always looking for better ways to explain things. This semester I've been using a new method to teach unit conversion (e.g. convert 18.3 centimeters to millimeters) because it's a concept that always gives my students a lot of grief. I wanted to try turning the method into a Flash game that my students can use, but I have no idea how to start.
Back in the day I took a very basic class or two in programming using C++, but I haven't done any programming since then. Is it worthwhile for me to try and learn enough to program a simple Flash game myself? If so, any ideas on how to start? Or should I just hire someone to do it for me?
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I know next to nothing on this type of programming, but recently found out about JavaFX, Silverlight and Flex, you may want to consider these also.
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Alan Monroe
United States
Columbus
Ohio
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Do you have a pencil sketch of how you envision the game looking?
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Nathan
United States
Lansing
Michigan
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Coincidently, I teach a course in Flash game design at my local community college.
If you get a reasonably new version of Flash you can use ActionScript 3 to do all your coding in. It is much cleaner than the previous version, and is object oriented with syntax very much like C++ or Java. The downside is that you'll need to know a fair amount of programming concepts if you want to make anything complicated. If all you're looking at is something slideshowesque, or buttons that trigger a conversion from one unit to another, it's not too bad. Certainly easier than Java or C++ for those sorts of tasks since the code backend connects to the screen graphics easily and without any other libraries. And, depending on what you want to build, you may not even need to code that much.
What sort of scope for this project did you have in mind?
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Mike Cross
United States
Atkinson
New Hampshire
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I was messing around on Google and found this tool (it may be a little slow to load):
http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/frames_asid_272_g_3_t_4.html?open...
It's very similar to what I want to do. How hard would it be to program something like that? I could have my students use that tool and save me a bunch of work, but I'd like to incorporate a few additional chemistry topics into the program (like using density as a conversion factor).
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Scott Alden
United States
Dallas
Texas
Aldie's Full of Love!
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Flash is probably overkill for what you want... maybe try squeak?
www.squeak.org
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Fraser
Australia
Melbourne
Yep that was 12 Power Grid maps back to back over two days. Worth doing, but possibly not in such a concentrated burst.
Ooh yes, now a little to the left - my nose is itchy. No, no the other left! Now what colour is 12 supporter badge going to be I wonder?
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mcross wrote: I teach chemistry at a community college and I'm always looking for better ways to explain things. This semester I've been using a new method to teach unit conversion (e.g. convert 18.3 centimeters to millimeters) because it's a concept that always gives my students a lot of grief.
Multiplying by 10 is giving them grief? 
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James Cheevers
United Kingdom
Liverpool
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Karlsen wrote: Multiplying by 10 is giving them grief?
It's COMMUNITY college.
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Nathan
United States
Lansing
Michigan
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Flash might be a little bit overkill, but it wouldn't be too hard. The worst part would probably be entering in all the conversion factors you want. In that example, there is no factor for meters to feet, so you have to convert meters to centimeters to inches to feet. Is that the experience you want, with the canceling of units, or is it enough to have basic dropdowns with units that can be selected? For example, selecting meters gives a list of several other length units and selecting one just converts.
Also, if this Java-based tool is pretty much what you want, why not use it?
And in a pinch, you can use Google directly for unit conversions. Google "9.8 m/s in ft/s"
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United States
Saint Joseph
Michigan
I would do all the things I have ever dreamed of doing. I would love to become a professional whistler.I'm pretty amazing at it now, but I wanna get, like, even better. Make my living out of it.
Bffffttt, Pffffttt, Buuuuurtt........
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Karlsen wrote: mcross wrote: I teach chemistry at a community college and I'm always looking for better ways to explain things. This semester I've been using a new method to teach unit conversion (e.g. convert 18.3 centimeters to millimeters) because it's a concept that always gives my students a lot of grief. Multiplying by 10 is giving them grief? 
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Mark Britten
United Kingdom
Newark
Nottinghamshire
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Not that this is any help, but I've written temperature converters in various programming languages, including C++.
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Mike Cross
United States
Atkinson
New Hampshire
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Thanks for all the replies. I'm going to look into squeak, it doesn't seem too bad. Until then I think I'll have them use the online tool. I want them to see how the units cancel, but eventually I want them to be able to enter their own conversion factors.
Unit conversions are just the beginning. Converting from meters to centimeters is trivial, but it helps them to see how you can use conversion factors to do a bunch of different calculations. Here's a typical question for the first exam:
You are to take 0.250 g of antibiotic. The liquid suspension you have is at a concentration of 135 mg/5.0 mL. How many mL should you take?
It's just a simple conversion problem, but the students usually freak out when they see it. I want them to practice taking it one step at a time and seeing how the units cancel.
Once they understand the basic concept, we can use it to solve stoichiometry problems like this one:
Hydrogen peroxide decomposes to oxygen gas and water.
If you want to produce 36 mL of oxygen gas (at STP), what volume of 5% (w/v) hydrogen peroxide solution should you use?
So the problems do get a little trickier, but the skills they need are the same. The online tool above will help with the unit conversions, but ideally I would like to incorporate other features to help with the more advanced stuff.
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Fraser
Australia
Melbourne
Yep that was 12 Power Grid maps back to back over two days. Worth doing, but possibly not in such a concentrated burst.
Ooh yes, now a little to the left - my nose is itchy. No, no the other left! Now what colour is 12 supporter badge going to be I wonder?
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mcross wrote:
So the problems do get a little trickier, but the skills they need are the same. The online tool above will help with the unit conversions, but ideally I would like to incorporate other features to help with the more advanced stuff.
Ah that explains it. Good plan to build up to the more difficult ones.
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