Failures In Teaching Physics Through KSP
Stories from having three people play a video game
For those that don’t know Kerbal Space Program(KSP) is a truly amazing video game for teaching your kids rocket science. Well, Orbital Mechanics but as a bonus you’ll have to learn other parts of Newtonian Mechanics along the way. I’ve quite enjoyed playing the game and made my rocket ships from Kerbin and landed on Mun. I found it extremely interesting and wanted to try having a few others play it. So wanted to talk about the hits and the misses.
Myself
I’ll be honest. I’ve actually really enjoyed the game. But it had a very steep learning curve. You have to go through the tutorials to be able to access the game. And the controls in the beginning seem kind of funky. Plus you have to do a lot of reading through the tutorials. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to do any interplanetary exploration in this game yet so I myself have really only scratched the surface of this game. But I have to say the amount I’ve played has already gotten me a lot of value.
- I gained the happiness of them clarifying that you’re not under zero gravity in orbit. It’s just that everything around you is under the same gravity and so you experience weightlessness. I already knew that but it was still good to see a video game saying that. It helps with my irrational annoyance when someone says you’re weightless in space because gravity is no longer acting on you.
“There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. … Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.” — Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe, and Everything
2. The second thing I gained was that in explaining what it means to get into orbit, while I always knew the Physics of it KSP made me connect the dots with the above Douglas Adams quote. This is in fact the most accurate description of what it means to be in orbit. You hurtle towards the ground, except you have to be moving fast enough that you miss.
3. I learned all the lingo like Delta-V, Apoapsis, Periapsis, gravity drag, that means if you’re watching a space movie with me, I can be very informative or very annoying as I desire. This is very useful in making sure the popcorn is passed to you on your terms.
4. Being able to experiment with design decisions really allowed me to try and play around with things and gave me a real appreciation for the kinds of design decisions that go into rocketry.
5. When landing on the huge mountains of Minmus you realize the impact gravity has in shaping the topology of heavenly bodies. Comparing that with your first landing on Mun. Plus, the amazing views you get. It’s just a video game but it is most likely the closest I will get to experience that sight. Plus the exact Physics of a moon landing, if you slow down too quickly you’ll come crashing down. Too slowly and you’ll tumble into a crash. With all the joking above, it was the most tangible familiarity I gained with concepts I learned in 11th grade Physics. And this game has very real educational value
In fact it is because of this educational value that NASA has collaborated with KSP. And why I would encourage someone to give a pass to their child if they play a bit more KSP than they should. But I didn’t want to talk about myself. I wanted to talk about my failures.
Dad
The first person I tried to introduce the game to was my dad. My dad tried it out. But he made two mistakes. The first mistake was when given a set of instructions he tried to understand the instructions. Everyone (born since 1980) knows the goal of tutorials is not to learn stuff. It is to get through the motions as quickly as possible. The problem with trying to learn is there will always be some confusion. So you need to as quickly as possible get to seeing the big picture. Once the big picture is there, then you can go back to the parts that you did not learn properly and you can learn them with the right context.
In addition the controls are kind of clunky until you get used to them. Once you get used to them they make sense, in terms of what’s needed from you in designing a rocket but still the steep learning curve which detracted me, my dad couldn’t get past. Although being an engineer himself I’m sure he would have enjoyed it once he got the hang of it. But he wasn’t persistent enough.
My Nephew A
My nephew is 10 years old. With him, I believe I made the mistake of having him try this game too soon. I believe the first time I tried to get him to play it was when he was 6. And as smart as he is, he didn’t have the patience to go through it then. I’ll probably give it another try, and instead of leaving him to the tutorials, I’ll try more of built craft. And we can try from there. The kid is persistent, and can handle complexity. He plays Hearts of Iron so in terms of playing complex grand strategy games he does more than me. But at 6, he wasn’t going to be able to get through the instructions. In the mean time we’ve been taking a crack at teaching programming through Roblox. That peer programming work was definitely successful and I’m really impressed by the ability of Roblox to teach programming. I believe in that strongly enough that I have to follow this message with I own RBLX shares.
My Friend Umair
The last person I tried to get to play this game was my friend Umair. He was actually very interested. He wanted to play more, but being in his 30s there were some limits to how much he could play. So we left it as one of those promises of things that we’ll do next time, where the next time still hasn’t come. Still, the immediate fascination of Umair shows that I’m not the only odd person that got interested in this game and thought it was amazing. In fact the game has sold more than 2 million copies so there have to be a lot more people like me.
Conclusion
Which is the amazing thing. Many people would not have shown this level of interest in Physics class. But KSP proves that people are genuinely interested in learnings Physics and how the world works. Provided you get the packaging right. And KSP is almost there with the packaging. I say almost, because it should be made accessible to more people.
Oh also, while we’re talking about orbits, do you know you can go into orbit on sea level and you’ll experience weightlessness. You just need to maintain 23 times the speed of sound. Which is also why I hate The Flash. For a character that cannot fly, he is literally flying all the time. In fact most of his running motion cannot be acquired by running because when you’re in orbit you’re weightless so you cannot run because you exert no normal on the ground. If you try to speed up by pushing against the ground you’ll find yourself flying up in the air.
