I’ve always enjoyed playing games. As I said in my Minecraft post, I was an avid Minecrafter back in the day. A few other games I’ve enjoyed playing are Stardew Valley, Civilization VI, and Cities Skylines. And of course, I used to spend many hours trying to convince my mom why an extra hour of the latest Mario or Pokemon game was actually really beneficial for my brains development. I can’t say I ever really convinced her, but using video games as an educational tool has always been something that I’ve been interested in.
I want to keep these posts mostly short and sweet, so I’m going to explore one game that I think has some educational value, rather than trying to create a comprehensive list.
This game, called Kerbal Space Program, has a lot of educational potential in my opinion. In this game, players create rockets to fly wherever they want, for any purpose they want. The interesting part of the game is that it realistically follows aerodynamic and orbital physics. There are a TON of intricacies in this game, and far more than I could explain in a single blog post. In order to get a better understanding of how the game actually works, please check out this really interesting video below of a Mars Rover engineer building a Mars Rover in the game.
I think that Kerbal Space Program could offer upper level physics students a really novel and interesting way of exploring aerodynamics and orbiting bodies. It’s one thing to do a word problem about a rocket ship, but it’s an entirely different ball game if you’ll actually be able to watch the result of your calculations on a pretty realistic simulator.
Although I personally don’t have a huge background in physics, I think games like this could certainly have a place in a physics classroom.
Kerbal Space Program is just one fish in the sea of educational video games, and I’m excited to continue to cast my line!
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