John S. Martin
These games are intended to expose students to the vocabulary of chemistry: formulas, combination rules, and descriptive chemistry. They are played using an abbreviated 72 element periodic table. Elements must be selected from the table: this provides psychomotor stimulus to embed a mental map of the periodic table.
An unknown chemical formula (from a collection of 320 in the database) must be guessed, element by element and number by number. Usually the missing items can be inferred from the ones that have already been guessed. Feedback is given after incorrect guesses. For an element, the responses become increasingly specific, and involve its properties.
There are two games. In the Nomenclature Game the name of the compound is given; in the Formula Game it is not. In the Formula Game the score on each formula is 20 minus the number of wrong guesses and five formulas make a game, maximum 100. In the Nomenclature Game the score on each formula is 10 minus the number of wrong guesses and ten formulas make a game, maximum 100.
Several options are available to players. There are tutorials and on-screen context-sensitive help. Players may choose from up to seven lists of formulas, if they have been provided and enabled by the instructor. Three conventions for naming groups in the periodic table are available: the American A-B, the European A-B, and the IUPAC-ACS 1-18. A player may select any one; the computer will then use that convention in all feedback and descriptions of elements.
There are scoreboards showing histograms of all games played as well as the top scorers and their scores for each list. There is an interactive periodic table, where selection of an element calls up a brief description of its chemistry. The properties described are those used in the game.
A password-protected instructor utility allows editing of all of the formulas in up to seven lists. The instructor may also reset the scoreboard and the statistics display, set the default list and periodic table name convention, and enable or disable the formula lists.
These lessons are DOS applications. They are available from the Journal of Chemical Education: Software on a CD-ROM. Subscribers to the Journal of Chemical Education may download the games directly from the JCES Web site, jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCESoft. See the instructions on the Ordering Information page.
Home page | Nature of the games | Playing the games | Feedback | Strategy | Utilities | Ordering information
Updated July 24, 2000