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Educational: 4.8
Overall Design: 4.3
Ease of Use: 4.2
(4.0 = good, 4.5 = very
good, 5.0 = excellent)
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Program Description Commentary Who Is This Program For
Why We Selected This Program Computer Requirements
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Your off screen narrator is a rather eccentric inventor who has created 3 "Great Works", in fact, 3 massive and very interesting pinball machines. Through events you will hear, he has become stuck in a rocket circling around the moon and his great pinball machines back on earth have fallen apart. To rebuild them, he needs help. From guess who?
You travel to a village and discover the first "Great Work". It still works (just -see middle right) and you can play it but if you want to rebuild it to it's former glory you must reinstall it's major components. To "earn" a component part, you pick, for example, a faucet. You are then presented with 3 questions that relate to learning about the concepts of force, resistance and the fulcrum, as demonstrated in how a faucet actually works.
If you don't know the answer you have at hand "the inventor's journal". By clicking on the journal, ("research this") you will be immediately brought to the page where a clear and simple explanation and an illustration of the concepts are found. Once you have answered the questions correctly, you install the faucet into the machine and it transforms ingeniously into a working part of the pinball machine And so you proceed until you have restored all the component parts, by answering all the questions and doing your research.
You can stop and play the pinball game anytime during your rebuilding process, but the machine doesn't work to it's full powers until you have all the parts back in place. Once you complete rebuilding, off you go to pinball heaven. There is a second and third machine to rebuild each different from the previous - one on an island and the other on the moon.
Pinball Science has a total of 94 learning modules and 3 levels of difficulty. The learning covers about 20 different areas of basic science and physics. In terms of the pinball machines themselves, there are literally thousands of different possible designs and it is a brand new game every time you play.
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"I have never seen pinball machines like these before" Aaron, age 11
" I eventually created a pinball game with my own design. It was great." Brian, age 12
" I was amazed at how the pinball game worked and I actually found learning some the scientific principles interesting. We are doing some of this stuff at school." Sharon, age 14
The structure of this program is do your homework and then, play your brains out. The child who is going to enjoy this program is patient (is able to slow down and concentrate), likes reading and figuring things out, and is prepared to do a little work first before play.
Once one of the "Great Works" pinball machines is experienced when it is fully operating, many of our testers' motivation to move forward to reconstructing the next machine went way up. This is a great program for a Saturday afternoon when you have lots of time. This program is for anybody of any age, who enjoys a top notch game of pinball.
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What more clever way to get kids engaged in learning many of the basics of science than by introducing the basic concepts in the process of building your own pinball machine, that you can then play to your heart's content.
What we also noticed and liked about Pinball Science was that there were several levels of learning going on at the same time. Not only were the kids learning about the basics of science, but they were also exercising their reading comprehension and specifically how to read with the purpose of finding an answer - i.e. how to research . (We found, and quite understandably, most kids were having to look up the answers in the journal). The program is also exercising your typing and spelling skills when you are entering in your answers.
The quality of work of David MacCauley, who wrote the original book is to be found here --simple and easy to understand descriptions, excellent illustrations and the imaginative story line of our eccentric inventor and his exploits.
Two technical notes. There were two points where it wasn't clear how to proceed. When you get to the pinball site and want to start rebuilding the machine, click on the blueprint icon and when the blueprint emerges click on the "component store" to get going. Secondly, when you have completed one pinball stage and want to go the next, explore around in the "Log Book" to find the answer.
P.S. The pinball games when fully operating were very, very well designed and operated in ways that a real pinball machine couldn't match.
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Pricing and Online Ordering
(or call toll free -1-800-250-9229 )
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Platform: PowerMac™ :CD-ROM, RAM : 16MB, Hard Drive: 20MB, Video : 256 colour or better, CD-ROM: 4X or better, Other: Requires a 100 Mhz PowerPC or better
Platform: Windows® 3.1,: CD-ROM, CPU : 486/66Mhz or better, RAM : 8MB, Hard Drive: 80MB, Video : 256 colour or better, CD-ROM: 2X or better, Sound : Windows compliant sound device Mouse :
Platform: Windows® 95/98 CD-ROM, CPU : 486/66Mhz or better, RAM : 16MB, Hard Drive: 80MB, Video : Super VGA (640x480x256 colour), CD-ROM: 4X or better, Sound : Windows compliant sound device
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or to see other science programmes
My Amazing Human Body - ages 5-10
Magic School Bus Explores Bugs - ages 4-9
The New Way Things Work - ages 8 - 15
Field Trip To The Rainforest - ages 9 - 16
Starry Night Complete Space & Astonomy Pack - ages 12 & up
Science Matrix (cell biology) - ages 12 & up
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