- Platform: Windows 98 / 95
- Media: CD-ROM
- Item Quantity: 1
System Requirements
Product Features
- Design and build your own pinball games
- Learn about the 24 core science topics
- Learn about energy, friction, gravity, magnetic force, simple machines, units, and measurement
- 3 difficulty levels make learning about science fun
- More than 45,000 words of text help integrate science with pinball fun
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Levers, springs, and gears--the parts of a pinball game are a perfect collection of simple machines, and a perfect context for learning about physical science. In David Macaulay's Pinball Science, you are given the blueprints to giant pinball machines that have fallen into disrepair. It is your job to acquire components for rebuilding the now-derelict games. This is accomplished by answering science questions about the needed parts of the games--to get springs for bumpers, for example, you might have to show a general understanding of the concept of elasticity. This may sound difficult, but all of the information players require is contained within the program itself, available with a couple of mouse clicks.
Aimed at children between the ages of 9 and 14, Pinball Science ensures that players achieve a grip on the basic terminology of Newtonian physics, covering topics from friction to air pressure. The quizzes come with three levels of difficulty and mostly provide an exercise in reading comprehension. If you can understand the science concepts discussed in the game's large database, you can pass the quiz and move on to actually building the games. And with components in hand, putting the machine together is simplicity itself--the blueprints show where the various parts can be placed, and it is up to the player to choose their configuration.
The payoff, of course, is that once the pinball machine is built, you can play it. This may seem like heresy to parents or any player who treasures the physicality of pinball. Indeed, the game does lose a great deal in an electronic format (such as the subtlety of carefully lining up the ball with its target, using a series of lever taps, or the ability to tilt the machine precisely to avoid losing the game). To compensate, though, the electronic version offers charming twists on the pinball theme, such as using woolly mammoths or astronauts for bumpers.
For those who are not pinball purists, this game lets players put the sometimes abstract-seeming ideas of motion physics into utterly enjoyable practice. --Alyx Dellamonica
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