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Particle Builder A Board Game for the Teaching of the Standard Model of Particle Physics at a Secondary Level

Lachlan McGinness, Yutong Ma, Mohammad Attar, Andrew Carse, Yeming Chen, Thomas Green, Jeong-Yeon Ha, Yanbai Jin, Amy McWilliams, Theirry Panggabean, Zhengyu Peng, Jing Ru, Jiacheng She, Lujin Sun, Jialin Wang, Zilun Wei, Jiayuan Zhu

TL;DR

Particle Builder evaluates an online board game designed to teach the Standard Model to high school students. The study compares learning gains from gameplay to traditional instruction and a quark-puzzle activity, finding that a 1–2 hour session yields learning gains comparable to about 7 hours of conventional teaching (average gain ≈ 0.16 vs ≈ 0.17, ≈ 0.23 for the quark puzzle). It also reports high student enjoyment and engagement, with most students perceiving the activity as easier and more enjoyable than standard lessons. The work demonstrates a scalable digital tool that reduces teacher workload while supporting core SM concepts in secondary curricula.

Abstract

We present Particle Builder, an online board game which teaches students about concepts from the Standard Model of Particle Physics at a high school level. This short activity resulted in a gain of 0.16, indicating that students learned a significant amount of particle physics knowledge. Students found the activity was more engaging and less difficult than a normal classroom lesson.

Particle Builder A Board Game for the Teaching of the Standard Model of Particle Physics at a Secondary Level

TL;DR

Particle Builder evaluates an online board game designed to teach the Standard Model to high school students. The study compares learning gains from gameplay to traditional instruction and a quark-puzzle activity, finding that a 1–2 hour session yields learning gains comparable to about 7 hours of conventional teaching (average gain ≈ 0.16 vs ≈ 0.17, ≈ 0.23 for the quark puzzle). It also reports high student enjoyment and engagement, with most students perceiving the activity as easier and more enjoyable than standard lessons. The work demonstrates a scalable digital tool that reduces teacher workload while supporting core SM concepts in secondary curricula.

Abstract

We present Particle Builder, an online board game which teaches students about concepts from the Standard Model of Particle Physics at a high school level. This short activity resulted in a gain of 0.16, indicating that students learned a significant amount of particle physics knowledge. Students found the activity was more engaging and less difficult than a normal classroom lesson.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 7 sections, 4 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. The Particle Builder Game
  3. Learning Outcomes
  4. Survey Methods
  5. Results
  6. Conclusion
  7. Acknowledgements

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: The Up Quark card from Particle Builder. The card contains the electric charge, spin, mass and mean lifetime which the students must examine regularly in the game. Electric charge is given in units of elementary charge (e).
  • Figure 2: Flow diagram showing the basic gameplay of Particle Builder. Full instructions for playing the game can be found at Zenodo McGinness2018Particle.
  • Figure 3: Screenshot of the online version of Particle Builder, showing a human player versus the AI opponent.
  • Figure 4: Each column corresponds to the gain scores for a question from the pre/post-test. Errors bars indicate the standard error in the mean from the $n=225$ students.