As the last day of school approaches, most students seem to be counting the seconds until summer vacation. However, students in Alternative Choices in Education (ACE) count the seconds left until the final battle of their elemental superheroes, making theories and trying to see which element will win the final showdown.
ACE science teacher Benjamin Little developed the Elemental Superhero Project more than 12 years ago, where he had students select an element from the periodic table and explore its properties and trends. Over the years, the project evolved into a complex, Dungeons-and-Dragons-inspired game where students use their chosen element as superheroes to fight and win against their opponents.
Students pick an element from the periodic table they find interesting and calculate the strength of their element in various categories based on the element’s chemical properties. Later, on the last day of school, students will use all their research to battle each other like in a board game.
When creating his project, inspired by the fantasy role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons, Little tweaked some of the elements of the game in order to make it a more educational experience for his students.
“Strength is still strength, but now it’s based on research that you did, about its density and its hardness—whether or not we use it in any sort of weaponry. So you do research about, like, ‘Oh, well, this guy’s nitrogen. Nitrogen is the foundation of almost every explosive,’” Little said.
Senior Abigail Ketema said she faced a very tough opponent during the tournament and even though she ended up losing, she found the experience enjoyable.
“He played carbon, and carbon is in every single thing. So any weapon, tool, anything that you can fight with, carbon’s in. So it was not a fun experience fighting him because I lost within like five minutes since he was really prepared, but fighting everyone was really fun,” Ketema said.
Before the tournament, knowing as much as possible about your chosen element can be helpful. For example, through extensive research and a hunger for victory, senior Sana Lai was able to create her elemental superhero, beryllium.
“I found out that it’s in MRIs. I found out that it’s in nuclear weapons and a lot more. I also found out that some people use it as jewelry. It made it really interesting because, for everything that I found, it meant that I could make a move and have a better chance of winning,” Lai said.
ACE alumnus Neil Clarke ‘24 said that he found chemistry class more enjoyable with Little even though the content in both ACE and regular class is not different.
“You’re learning basically the same information, but it was more fun than my previous experience with chemistry,” Clarke said. “Also a lot of the complex things that I found really complicated in chemistry were much more simplified. When I took it with Mr. Ben [Little], he was very good at putting the materials in an understandable way.”
An effect of the Elemental Superhero Project is that it gets students who would not usually be interested in chemistry to be more involved in the field, and Little has seen those effects through old students who come back to visit him.
“A [former student] is studying business and music production, but he came and he found me and he was like, ‘I’m doing business and music production in college now, but you know what I find myself doing in a whole bunch of my free time?’” Little said. “‘I’m just watching YouTube videos about chemistry.’”
