Choose your pieces – Assemble them – Beat the clock!
The Nucleation Game is a hands-on activity about nucleation where the aim is to build a crystal ‘nucleus’ as fast as you can. How will you assemble the pieces? Does another method make the process faster or slower? Just like the nucleation process of crystals made up of atoms and molecules, how you build the nucleus affects the speed but also the type of structure that you create…
After starting the timer, the player tries to assemble a ‘nucleus’ of 36 blue Zoob pieces as quickly as they can.
Variations on the Nucleation Game include choosing different pieces that connect in different ways but can form the same structure (e.g., Grey Zoob pieces, which have a ball at one end; or a mixture of Blue and Yellow pieces), or racing against another player instead of a timer.
At CoCoMAD festival in 2024, out of 25 players of The Nucleation Game, only one went below three minutes. Equally, we were really impressed by the players that persevered to complete the nucleus beyond ten minutes! Here is the leaderboard at the end of the event:
Live music edition
We have also developed a musical soundtrack for The Nucleation Game especially for an edition of The Nucleation Game that features interactive live music. Here is a snippet:
The Nucleation Game has been supported by a CCDC Engagement Grant and (with live music) by the Royal Society of Chemistry Outreach Fund. It was developed by Hamish Yeung, Pablo Sonnaillon and Tanguy Pocquet with UoB Chemistry undergraduate students Alice Walker and Keyuan Huang.
(Information for demonstrators can be found here)
Yeung Research Group at UoB 