Chemical Dominoes
Evidence of Work
For this project, our task was to create a board game that involves chemical reactions, that could be played at the the game night presentation. The requirements were to have a double-displacement reaction, single displacement reaction, creation of a gas, and the lighting of an LED.
My teammates started building the game board out of wood, while I was left to figure out how to get the chemical requirements fulfilled. I knew that the fewer reactions we could do, the better, and we followed the principles of KISS.1 This meant that we want to split the project into a few reactions that covered all the requirements, and that are reproducible enough to where we won’t have any dumb failures when presenting. From there, we simplified everything down to the simplest it can be while still checking all the boxes.
An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity.
Terry A. Davis
After finalizing the exact chemical reactions we would be doing, I began to focus all my attention on the electrical aspect of the project. We had a marathon-like ending to the game where you would run through a ‘rope’2, which breaks the circuit, turning on the LED. The reason for that is we built a circuit that is effectively a logical NOT operator. While the tin foil is intact, the LED is off, and when it’s broken, the LED turns on.
The circuit itself was built using a breadboard, lots of jumper wire, and thin twisted copper wire to attach the jumpers to the breadboard, along with a few resistors, a LED, and a few other miscellaneous items.
Another chemical reaction we did is the classic baking soda & vinegar reaction. The ideal ratio for baking soda to vinegar is 1/2 as much baking soda as vinegar, to maximize the reaction, so that’s what we used.