News from Mathnasium of Columbus Bradley Park

If you teach or have kids of your own, here’s a great way to get them into chemistry.

On the homeschooling blog Teach Beside Me, Karyn Tripp shows how to create a Battleship-esque game with a periodic table.

All you need to do is print out four periodic tables, which you can easily find on  Google Images. Along the left side, you then label the rows alphabetically from a to i. You then set up the a battlestation using two folders facing back-to-back and attached by a paper clip at the top. You can also laminate the sheets to make the game reusable.

As Tripp explains on the blog, “The kids can then mark where they want to place their ships by circling rows of 2, 3, 4, and 5 elements on the lower table. They play by calling out coordinates. If they miss they put an X on the spot they chose on the upper table. If they get a hit, they circle it.”

After learning to play in this way, you can then use more advanced ways to find the opponent's “battleships,” such as using an element’s atomic number or mass number. You can also make a rule that a “ship” has to be in each group, i.e. one in the noble gases, one in transition metals, etc.