It has been a long semester for so many reasons. There were so many distractions outside of the classroom - too many to list. Civil unrest around the world, marches in the streets, a provincial government cutting budgets and enforcing exhausting laws. On top of that, my lab was situated in a loud construction zone, so I could not hear myself think, let alone communicate with my students... I sometimes must remind myself that we reside on a celestial spec sailing through the cosmos; it helps me remember to keep life's small nuisances small.
What I know for sure is that time spent with my class in my classroom is my refuge and an escape from the worries of the world. I decided to celebrate the end of my mechanics course this morning by setting up and running a 'Physics Escape RoomTM'.
This semester's escape room was Christmas-themed
For those less nerdy than me and unfamiliar with Escape Rooms, they are enclosed spaces where participants need to decode many puzzles to eventually escape in an allotted amount of time. My wife and I have spent countless hours in these rooms; our intensity and determination to succeed often scares the friends who join us.
My escape room is a bit different than the regular kind, in that there are fewer logic puzzles, and more physics scenarios with unknowns that can only be solved by applying physical laws. It is a fair bit of work to set these rooms up, but it serves as a great review of what my class learned in Mechanics class this semester, and ends it off on a fun note. Many students expend so much energy feeling anxious about performing well in college, that they forget to ever have fun. I would argue that if you can learn while having fun, you will remember those things for longer.
My students feel trepidation over the final exams that are around the corner. On top of teaching physics, I often feel like a councilor or life coach, urging them to take care of themselves, take deep breaths, and not to overstress. Just like an escape room, to succeed in final exams, you need to strike a balance. Success is arrived at by students who are a bit stressed (enough to be continuously engaged) but not so stressed that they cannot focus on the task at hand.
I got the idea to create escape rooms for physics years ago. I always enjoyed escape room challenges that went beyond code breaking. I liked when prior knowledge of things, like chess for instance, could be called upon. Like, your knowledge becomes this superpower that is valued by your group. I want my students to feel that way about physics. Throughout the semester, they have developed new ways to see the world, and they should feel empowered by their new knowledge and ability to analyze nature.
Lab Layout in Mechanics Escape Room
When I was in college, I had a biology class where many stations were set up, and you could spend 15 minutes, say, observing a station and drawing conclusions, like a bunch of mini labs. This was way more interesting to me than one long lab where you measure this, then that, then change this and re-measure, etc. Those labs are necessary, but they can get boring after a while. As seen above, demo stations form the basis of a Physics Escape RoomTM.
Another difference between traditional escape rooms, which have one team at a time, is that my room has many teams competing to get out first. This year, three teams managed to escape the room in the 1 hr 15 min time allotment. To their dissappointment, no bonus points are awarded for getting out first. Still, the top team in each section happily posed for a pic afterwards to be featured in The Engineer's Pulse.
Group 1 victors (left to right): Xavier, Amélia, and Luc
[notice the hole in the ceiling at the top of this photo - with all the work going on in and outside of our lab this semester, I am just pleased that no student fell through the floor]
Group 2 victors (left to right): Nicholas, David, Avoy, and Trong-Don (missing from photo: Malik)
Dear my beloved Fall 2024 mechanics students, whether or not you physically escaped the room today, you have completed the semester, and I hope you found it to be an enriching experience. Now it is time to lock yourself in a different room and study ;)
Good luck on your finals!
