Serious games applied to the study of the "Substance Structure and Atom" units in chemistry

Mathematics and science are subjects that some students are quite scary. There are many units in chemistry that it is difficult to imagine or understand the real meaning without actually performing experiments. For example, protons are positively charged, but even if they know they are positively charged, they still unable to understand the reason for positive charge. Students need to memorize chemical-related professional terms and formulas. In the case of not understanding or imagining, students can only memorize it by force, which makes students feel that the learning process is abstract and difficult to understand. Therefore, this study intends to solve the learning problem through the development of educational serious games. The scientists in the game will guide the students to complete the relevant chemical levels, and make it easier for students to distinguish the types of substances through visual materialization. This study takes the "Material Structure and Atom" unit as the main analysis and research bid in the first semester of the second grade of junior high school, and develops a set of serious games. The key learning knowledge in the unit of "Substance Structure and Atom" includes (1) understanding elements, compounds and mixtures (2) understanding the smallest unit of matter (3) analyzing atomic and molecular structures (4) reorganizing chemical equations. In order to allow students to absorb and understand relevant knowledge without pressure, this study uses a museum tour to transform students into scientists, understand the smallest unit of matter and the calculation of compound valence through play, and use elements to sort out various compounds and mixture equations. From the results of the questionnaire, it can be seen that the degree of students’ satisfaction with this system is between 3 and 4, that is, the range from "normal" to "satisfactory", which means that students’ acceptance is relatively average. Through the exquisiteness of scene modeling and the guidance of characters, students can really feel like they are in a museum, so that students can immerse themselves in the game and learn the knowledge about chemistry happily.