Games+and+simulations

[|Game] - structured playing, usually for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulation, or psychological role.

Games can prepare your brain for a life of building and engineering. Sometimes the best way to understand what engineers do is to do it!
 * [|Mars adventure]
 * [|Space Place - Play] - games
 * [|Buzz Lightyear] - series of games - math
 * [|Mars for Kids]
 * [|TryEngineering games]
 * [|Ed Heads]
 * [|Time Engineers] - teaches engineering, science, and math without leaving the fun of gaming behind. Students travel in a cool time machine to three different time periods and encounter typical engineering problems to be solved in order to build pyramids, irrigate farm land, command a WWII submarine, raise and lower medieval drawbridges, ...

Games as an introduction to engineering - Besides being fun and challenging, these engineering games also provide an opportunity to work through the steps in the Engineering Design Process. Play one or more of these engineering games to give you a first hand try at the problem solving skills engineers employ every day.

[|Try Engineering games] - extensive list to choose from - kid tested
 * [|Build a Lifeboat]
 * [|Drench]
 * [|NASA Station Spacewalk Game]
 * [|Roller Coaster Designer]
 * [|MRI Game]
 * [|Build It Yourself: Satellite! Game]
 * [|Goldburger To Go]

More engineering discovery games
 * [|Fantastic Contraption] - build a simple machine to accomplish a goal. Build a vehicle to move a square from one zone to another zone. Designs have to evolve to climb piles of rubble.
 * [|Beginner's Guide to Aeronautics] - [|NASA simulations]
 * LEGO Mindstorm, [|Fix the Factory] - Unity play required
 * [|Solar Car Racing] - needs Shockwave - installed, error on Mac - won't play 19jul
 * [|Grid Computing] - introduction to project management, prioritizing, cheesy music is really annoying ?? context - current state of using grid to solve problems

[|Simulation] - a way of seeing a thing happen without it actually taking place. A simulation can be used to predict what might happen without doing it, in case it is dangerous or too expensive or difficult. It can also be used to show people what will happen next, or what happened in the past.
 * [|Navy STEM for the Classroom] - Dive Mission, Flight School, Sea Trials
 * NASA, FAA - work on laptops - requires Java, access, advances aerodynamics
 * Wright flight

> testing, iteration, UID (User Interface Design), human-machine interface, failure analysis, quality assurance, simulation
 * Engineering ideas**

Here are some challenges for you to work on...
 * Do it**
 * try out the engineering games linked above
 * find other engineering games that introduce engineering ideas and thinking
 * design your own engineering game.


 * Learn more...**
 * [|Try Engineering games] - collection of free online games
 * [|8 Videogames to Get Your Kid Into Engineering] - range of platforms, prices, some ad-supported
 * [|Control Your Computer with Hand Gestures] - human-machine interface wristband that operates on both motion sensing and by detecting when muscles in the forearm are activated

Videos, Pictures, Facts
 * [|Elmo visits NASA] - videos
 * [|Space Place - Explore]

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