Oliphant Science Award winner Amber Washington creates Chem-Mystery board game
The prize-winning board game “Chem-Mystery” is one of many inventions on display at the Oliphant Science Awards Open Day.
A CLEVER board game that invites chemistry students to play detective and solve a mystery using experiments is among the prize-winning entries in this year’s Oliphant Science Awards.
“Chem-Mystery” creator Amber Washington, 16, now in Year 11 at University Senior College, enters the awards every year. She likes making games most of all, “so people can learn while having fun”.
The idea for this game came from a classroom activity in which students were given unmarked bottles of chemicals and told about tests that would identify the contents. “I enjoyed this investigation so much, I decided to employ the same principles in my game this year,” Amber said. “As well as including an old favourite experiment of mine, the Flame Test, to add another ‘element’ ... and make the overall game more Chem-Mysterious.”
“So you get a mystery chemical and then you need to work out what the chemical is, by doing all these little experiments.”
Last year, Ms Washington won the Oliphant Trophy for her game “Race to Save the Planet”. Her first prize was awarded in Year 2 for Tree Frog Trouble, a game about habitat destruction. The South Australian Science Teachers’ Association has been running the Oliphant Science Awards since its inception in 1981.
Awards convener Peter Turnbull said this year was bigger than ever, with 2172 projects from 2987 students at 107 schools, including 28 first-time schools.
“Students and teachers are changing schools and taking their enthusiasm for the Oliphant Science Awards with them,” he said.
“We’ve also noticed an increase in Scientific Inquiry entries in particular from class groups, indicating that teachers have successfully integrated the awards into their classrooms.”
Winning projects, models and inventions will be on display Sunday at the Open Day.
The family-friendly event includes science shows from Robogals, James’ Travelling Magic Show, Mobile Science Education, The Young Scientists of Australia, Nature Education Centre, Warrawong Sanctuary, and Engineers without Borders.
The 2018 Oliphant Science Awards Open Day is on Sunday afternoon, from 12pm to 4pm at Festival Functions, 292 Findon Road, Findon. Entry by gold coin donation.