A team of scientists and a games specialist have designed 'Diamond: The Game', a board game developed to give secondary school students a chance to explore a broad range of STEM scientific careers and subjects. This is achieved through first-hand experience of the different aspects of working in scientific research and life as a scientist and shows how research at a facility like Diamond underpins successful science. [...]
Dr Mark Basham and Dr Claire Murray from the UK's national synchrotron Diamond Light Source and Dr Matthew Dunstan from the University of Cambridge created the game for 2-5 players. It lasts between 20-30 minutes and is for ages 10 and up. It puts students directly in the role of a researcher at Diamond, visiting different beamlines (laboratories) to make progress in a diverse range of scientific projects in Physics, Chemistry, Cultural Heritage, and more.
[...] The game was developed in line with Diamond's Public Engagement programme which actively promotes careers in STEM to secondary level students who can visit the facility and see their scientific curricula in action. The target for the game was to therefore create an engagement option for schools that were not able to visit the facility. This became even more important with the advent of the pandemic. The team say that the potential for a resource like this to function in both formal and informal settings make it a valuable tool in multiple learning environments, especially as there is evidence children as early as seven make career limiting decisions.
This paper showcases a gaming approach which could be adapted by educators, educational professionals, or subject enthusiasts to cover any desired topic of study ie. not limited to STEM subjects and could be transferred to the broader curriculum. Diamond – The Game reflects the interdisciplinary nature of science undertaken at a facility like the Diamond synchrotron and how it underpins work on everything from fragments of Rembrandt's painting of Homer, COVID-19 drug screening, to the degradation of the Mary Rose Tudor warship and much more.
If you want to grab a few friends and play the home version, they released a Print and Play version in 2020.
Journal Reference:
Murray et al. Diamond: The Game – a board game for secondary school students promoting scientific careers and experiences. Research for All, 6(1): 14. DOI: 10.14324/RFA.06.1.14
[Ed's Comment: AC Friendly withdrawn. You can blame you-know-who for the spamming]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @09:47AM (5 children)
Designer 1: Ok, so progress in projects... which ones?
Designer 2: Well, there is Physics and Chemistry....
Designer 1: Ok, but we need more... What's more involved in STEM?
Both: Eh... Ehh....
Designer 2: Cultural Heritage?
Designer 1: Will do, we just throw in a few more of these.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday July 05 2022, @10:26AM (4 children)
What the hell is "Cultural Heritage"? Doesn't sound very STEM to me. More like ... oh the humanities!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @10:40AM (1 child)
My guess is old cottage buildings, country field hedges, old farmer markets... and all the "science" involved to restore them and keep them in that way.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday July 05 2022, @11:28AM
In other words carpentry, masonry, architecture, agriculture...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @11:27AM (1 child)
Given that it is a particle accelerator lab, my guess is that they do stuff like atomic spectroscopy on archeological specimens or flakes of paint on art works. My awareness on such things is many decades old (something like this [usu.edu]). In the older work they would use low energy proton beams to induce atomic transitions and look at the x-ray emissions to determine what isotopes were present and from that they can tell all sorts of things about its age and location. The proton beams allowed for a nondestructive analysis. I always thought it kind of cool that you can get your Ph.D. in atomic physics and end up being an archeologist!
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 05 2022, @03:53PM
Tick.
Diamond is an electron synchrotron. They make X-rays from synchrotron radiation and use it for that sort of thing.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Username on Tuesday July 05 2022, @10:00AM (3 children)
It's more accurate to say, "board games developed by Academics," since that is the primary pushers of this sort of thing.
Usually only academics want more "students" to ensure they get a higher level and more pay in the ponzi scheme of academia. Scientists in STEM careers outside that, usually want to educate less to ensure their continued employment. Nobody wants to train their replacement.
Anyway, It is kind of telling that they went with scientists instead of academics. Like the university system has a negative connotation associated with it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @11:32AM
Diamond is the "UK's National Synchrotron," so it is their version of Fermilab or CERN where they host visiting scientists from all over. I don't know how they are specifically set up, but if they are set up like the other national labs around the world then the core employees working there would not be academics.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @12:04PM
I forgot to add, but I'm a career non-academic scientist and I've advocated for STEM careers going back even before I was out of graduate school with a stable job of my own. A lot of us are passionate about the benefits of having people who are STEM educated as society is predominantly driven by technology and it is important to have some understanding about technology to make important decisions about that technology. Historically, and still true, is that our laws are written by lawyers, most of whom skirted around their STEM requirements in college because those classes are deemed "hard" and they don't need them to get into law school. A lot of us volunteer as judges for science fairs, mentoring students, etc. not because we are trying to support some fictitious ponzi scheme, but we really care about this stuff and we want more people trained in the field. The vast majority of STEM positions are not in academia and they are in industry, private enterprises, and in many "nontraditional" careers. We need more science majors as lawyers, patent examiners, teachers, etc.
Based upon my experience and the limited number of people I know who have gone into academia, your impression of it is very wrong. I'm sure most academics would love to have no students so that they can focus on their research interests. Apart from the tenured positions, the academic life is a really shitty life. Very long hours, very low pay, and filled with all sorts of administrative and departmental BS to deal with, plus having to teach, plus needing to bring in funding, plus needing to write papers, and it goes on and on. Your view on academia is like looking at the dozen Major League Baseball players at the top of the salary scale and assuming that is how it is for all the other players all they way down through the minor leagues. Here is one snapshot [nature.com]. I specifically didn't pursue the academic career because I didn't want to spend a decade jumping from postdoc to postdoc waiting for the elusive tenure-track position to open. As much fun as it was when I was young to picture the future me wearing a tweed coat with patches on the elbows and thoughtfully taking a draw on my pipe before uttering some brilliant and insightful statement to a room full of wide-eyed students who are hanging on my every word, reality is overworking yourself to the point of burnout, delaying or stressing your future family plans, and not knowing where you'll be working three years from now (or even what part of the country/world you'll be working in). It takes a special kind of passion or insanity to be part of that, or you need to be blessed with favorable circumstances (being unmarried or being able to be sole wage earner so that you can move about, or have a spouse who can work from literally anywhere in the world).
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday July 05 2022, @03:15PM
Those are researchers, not scientists.
There's a reason why companies have a research department, not a science department. Companies are interested in useful result, not in furthering knowledge for knowledge's sake.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday July 05 2022, @10:24AM (1 child)
I think they'll have had more fun making the game then the kids will have playing it. From the looks of the PnP version it looks quite dull. While the "goal" might be noble, to get more children invested or interested in STEM, it's very hard to actually know if this project will work or have any effect what so ever on their future carer choices. It could have. But for the most part you'll just never know. Very few of them, basically a non-existing amount of them, will later come out and tell someone that this boardgame Diamond changed their life and turned them onto a life of science instead of something else
But IF boardgames are the trainer for the future mine still involved becoming the CEO of a megacorp that will try to control Mars (Terraforming Mars) and my secret sidejob will be to investigate and battle evil eldritch lovecraftian horrors, in the 1920s (Arkham Horror). This sounds like how a new version of DOOM starts ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @10:51AM
Ask a 5 to 12 year old what they want their future profession to be, good chance it's, beside police officer and fire fighter, astronaut, dino-archeologist and veterinarian. I guess those will pull more kids into STEM than some boring board game.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday July 05 2022, @10:29AM (1 child)
I mean, I can't be the only one who first had to think of this [youtube.com].
(Score: 3, Funny) by RamiK on Tuesday July 05 2022, @02:19PM
Could be worse... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FmV2n7icLM [youtube.com]
compiling...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @10:45AM (1 child)
First couple of minutes were fun, but then I got accused of using the wrong pronoun and things went downhill from there... so basically a perfect simulation of academia.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @10:51AM
Our secondary school teacher knows one of the game developers and brought a copy of this game into our classroom. I solved the first three projects in record time - without giving away all the details, the trick to winning the Cultural Heritage section is to cancel the white males. Would play again. Five stars!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @02:07PM (2 children)
There is no undersupply of STEM students. There are fewer STEM jobs available in students' field upon graduation than there are STEM students.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @07:03PM (1 child)
And what do you base this assessment on? And to where should we point all these students for future employment?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05 2022, @08:48PM
It's not hard to find numerous sources going years back. We overproduce STEM PhDs in particular. These PhD candidates think they will become a professor. Many drop out without achieving the PhD. Some get it, but bounce around universities for years as postdocs hoping to get tenure that never comes. The university PhD overproduction scam is by now so well known (thanks to the Internet as a self-publishing vehicle) that students are finally, I believe, wising up to it. As for Bachelor and Master students, many of them go on to be employed, but not in the science or engineering field they studied. I guess if you consider becoming a computer programmer "STEM", at least many of them end up in some STEMish job other than their training. It's a terrible waste of time and money to do this, but it's common. I did it.
As for where "we" should point students, I would say at most "we" should make sure the students have researched realistic career outcomes and demand/supply for various careers and possibly encourage them to get practical training instead of going to university or maybe getting a 2 year degree instead. I wouldn't shoehorn young people into ANY field. Every person is an individual with unique talents, inclinations, and needs. People who know the person are best positioned to provide advice.