Minigame science revision engine

[Tythoid]

Ive been gonig through some exams recently and one of the things i made to help me was the physics revision engine. This is a map that asks the player 6form / A level questions varying from what is the symbol for current? to if a wave is moving 12cm every 6 seconds what is the speed? All questions are randomly generated and cover the whole curic im gonig to expand this game to have questions for physics, chemisty and biology and incorporate multi choice.

Why make this who will play it?
A large precentage of people on this forum and people that play wc3 are under the age of taking A level exams si it can help them in the future. This map will only be used by a small number of people but as long as it helps one person then it will have been worth making.

Why revise this way
No one enjoys revision, writing , reading, remembering. A game that incorporates A level questions in the form of a pop quiz style game is less boring well about the same level of boring as mobs grinding in games.

You would be able to revise from the computer without just reading pages and pages of text doing something interactive for a change!

Tell me what you think it should be done in 3weeks. If this wasnt in time to help you i apologise but for future A levelers it will be :thup:

 

[MurderMode]

What is an A level exam? Highschool? these questions sound like something we learn in the lowest level maths class when we are about 15 in aust.

It's important for a learning tool to be precise otherwise it's use is lost, an part of that is the questions themselves.... they can't be as loose as your examples.

See what I mean -

what is the symbol for current?

... this is kind of vague, because the mathematical symbol for current in equations is i, yet it also has a symbol for it's measurement (amps) which is A. This could be confusing for people trying to learn from your game who may be struggling. The question would be better if it read something like 'What is the unit measurement of current and it's mathematical symbol?' to which the answer would be an ampere (A) and i.

if a wave is moving 12cm every 6 seconds what is the 'average' speed?

12cm/6 seconds?... to someone who uses the imperial system in day to day 1ft/6sec makes sense and is still a speed. With this sort of basic question you would need to give it something to be converted into whether it be m/s, km/hr, cm/s, etc... fair enough there is an equation for average speed (distance/time) but you would need to mention that. The same question would be more useful if the answer was required to be in a specific measurement of distance and time, as I can't remember a time in school when I had a simple question like this that didn't require further conversion. That's a slow fucking wave tho

Anyways all I'm trying to point out is that yeah you are probably trying to do some good here, but tuition should be left to the professionals in the field and not done by someone who has just recently sat a test about the topic.... otherwise there is a big chance you could give false or misleading information that works against what you are trying to achieve

 

[Tythoid]

Murder mode I appreciate your post here are the answers to your questions.

What is a A level exam?

The A level exam in is the exam you take in England is you stay on for further education post 16 im uncertain of the American eqivilant. The physics A level is spilt up into 3 exams the first is on waves, bit/bytes, electricity forces. You do this in lower school but the A level goes into more detail.

sound like something we learn in the lowest level maths class when we are about 15 in aust.

The exams are not full of difficult questions its the knowledge of which equation to use such as knowing off hand how to work out the resistance in a parallel curcuit.

what is the symbol for current?

... this is kind of vague, because the mathematical symbol for current in equations is i, yet it also has a symbol for it's measurement (amps) which is A. This could be confusing for people trying to learn from your game who may be struggling. The question would be better if it read something like 'What is the unit measurement of current and it's mathematical symbol?' to which the answer would be an ampere (A) and i.

This was one of the areas of physics I found most difficult because in the test you need to know both its symbol in equations and the units it is delivered in. The current game model tries to teach the symbol and the units

12cm/6 seconds?... to someone who uses the imperial system in day to day 1ft/6sec makes sense and is still a speed. With this sort of basic question you would need to give it something to be converted into whether it be m/s, km/hr, cm/s, etc... fair enough there is an equation for average speed (distance/time) but you would need to mention that. The same question would be more useful if the answer was required to be in a specific measurement of distance and time, as I can't remember a time in school when I had a simple question like this that didn't require further conversion. That's a slow fucking wave tho

The units for all questions will be stated. Its practice now though to use ms-1 m/s. Its a slow wave because thats not an actual question just one I quickly added as the random generator that makes the questions uses real numbers so most questions have 2to4 digits such as 9.116.

Anyways all I'm trying to point out is that yeah you are probably trying to do some good here, but tuition should be left to the professionals in the field and not done by someone who has just recently sat a test about the topic.... otherwise there is a big chance you could give false or misleading information that works against what you are trying to achieve

Thanks for your concern but dont worry I will be using equations from the textbooks and previous exam papers im not including any of my own knowledge as your right its probbably flawed ill also be colaborating and testing the map with people that have taken the exam people alot more intelligent then me and better at physics.

 

[Larcenist]

> what is the symbol for current?

... this is kind of vague, because the mathematical symbol for current in equations is i, yet it also has a symbol for it's measurement (amps) which is A. This could be confusing for people trying to learn from your game who may be struggling. The question would be better if it read something like 'What is the unit measurement of current and it's mathematical symbol?' to which the answer would be an ampere (A) and i.

Understanding the difference between physical quantity and unit is a fundamental part of the physics class itself (at least it was in Sweden), so this question shouldn't bring much of an issue really.

> 12cm/6 seconds?... to someone who uses the imperial system in day to day 1ft/6sec makes sense and is still a speed. With this sort of basic question you would need to give it something to be converted into whether it be m/s, km/hr, cm/s, etc...

Always use the SI-units in physics, always...

As for the project itself, I'm assuming you have selectable classes (I'm not sure a 6th grader would appreciate a question about wave-lenghts etc... ), as well as difficulties within your class (because your example questions are extremely basic).

Good luck with your project.

 

[GooS]

6 Form / A level

I've never heard of thoose, could you explain a bit further what they include? Geometry, Math, Physics? or is it just Physics (Since the name kinda implies it)?

Understanding the difference between physical quantity and unit is a fundamental part of the physics class itself (at least it was in Sweden)

Indeed it was, and everytime I mixed something up I got a big fat subtraction in score on my tests. (Still managed to get a VG though, that would be a B in non swedish grades? )

What will your physics engine include?

 

[MurderMode]

larcenist your just being silly trying to prove me wrong, I didn't post that comment as an attempt to look smart but to point out the difficulty of creating a sufficient learning tutorial on such a broad topic. I finished school over 6 years ago, all of this stuff is a distant memory to me and so I probably took the questions from too much of a real-world perspective.

Curriculum and exams differ from school to school, city to city, state to state and country to country... so no matter what you do there is either going to be too much or not enough information on the topic to be useful for exam purposes.

My comments relating to the questions come from the point of view of how easy it could become confusing for someone with limited knowledge, not someone who knows all the answers... or else whats the point of it at all?

Anyhow.... gamers play games to escape from this kind of stuff, so my personal thought on it was that you would be wasting your time Tythoid, it'd be much more worth your while to make a game people would enjoy rather then reproduce a textbook in warcraft form..... yet that said if you enjoy making it then of course go ahead, map editing is more about the fun you have in designing your own project rather then the player count it accumulates....

....you would be much better off tho if you created this tutorial as a website instead of a game, more people would have access to it

 

[GooS]

Anyhow.... gamers play games to escape from this kind of stuff, so my personal thought on it was that you would be wasting your time Tythoid.....

If he makes a Physics Engine he could present it as a system itself, could be usefull for a realistic map, such things as acceleration

Or he could make snippets for each equation, I don't know what we already have here on TH

 

[MurderMode]

If he makes a Physics Engine he could present it as a system itself, could be usefull for a realistic map, such things as acceleration

Or he could make snippets for each equation, I don't know what we already have here on TH

what I took from the first post is that it the map is a physics revision tool for studying, it doesn't contain a physics engine as such.

 

[GooS]

what I took from the first post is that it the map is a physics revision tool for studying, it doesn't contain a physics engine as such.

Oh yeah, hm I thought to learn physics you would "play" with physics, but as I read a bit closer it's a quiz.

Well whatever he thinks is fun to do, is worth doing, good luck.

 

[Tythoid]

what I took from the first post is that it the map is a physics revision tool for studying, it doesn't contain a physics engine as such.

Correct I wont be using a physics engine but I will be using interactive diagrams to show processes such as magnification and a curcuit to
which parts can be added to show how to calculate resistance ect.

As for the project itself, I'm assuming you have selectable classes (I'm not sure a 6th grader would appreciate a question about wave-lenghts etc... ), as well as difficulties within your class (because your example questions are extremely basic).

The areas will be selectable at the moment im using the areas Waveforms, Visualisation, Electricty and forces. Im not sure what year you mean by 6th grader these questions will be for post 16

yet that said if you enjoy making it then of course go ahead, map editing is more about the fun you have in designing your own project rather then the player count it accumulates.

This project was initially just for my own purposes its helped me and ive put so much work into it that I feel it deserves finishing there are too many half finished projects out there of games people really wanted to make for this to become another.

Thanks for your feedback everyone your thoughts were all helpful