Chemistry Ion Dice Lesson

CHEMISTRY ION DICE!

Lesson Plan/Function: Students roll a total of five dice to generate a randomized list of Ions. There is one die for each category; regular metal cations, regular nonmetal anions and polyatomic anions- and two dice for transition metal cations.

These dice are a fun way to introduce students to the different possibilities and put together different ion formulas. (?)

Problem: Create a die with as many sides as possible to fit a single  list within its own die and minimize having more than one die per list. (ex. twelve sided die for a list of eleven instead of a six sided die.)

Assembly: There is no assembly required, however it is highly encouraged that each list of dice be its own color before printing.

Overall Dimensions: 

• Each die is roughly five centimeters tall and five centimeters wide. 
• The edges of the faces (pentagons) of the twelve sided range from 1.97-2.09 centimeters.
• The edges of the faces (triangles) of the ten sided die equal (INSERT DIMENSION)
• 0.07 cm engravement (may be different in the ten-sided die)

Design Process: 

The first thought was just to create a six sided die for each list until all the ions were covered. We quickly discovered that this would be a tedious amount of time and the result would have to be printing way more dice than what was needed.

It was also requested that each classroom were to have a classroom set of twenty-five. (Five dice x sets of twenty-five x five(?) classrooms)

Over trial and error, I tried to personally design a twelve sided die until eventually just followed a tutorial on YouTube. (Link)

The next step was to engrave the text onto the die. This was a little tricky because you couldn’t center the text within a pentagon and have the exponents centered as well.

So over many mis-measuring, and general eyeballing, I came across a general dimension for making the text look as centered as possible.

We then choose the font, “Concert One” to make the engraving. This was an “artistic” and legible font that didn’t look like standard Arial or Impact. (Link to Download Font)

Once I finished making all the possible twelve-sided dice, we moved on to focusing on the ten-sided die. We came to the conclusion that with my minimal knowledge of solidworks, it would be easier to download an already designed ten-sided die and engrave on the ions.

Figuring out the center of these now triangles to engrave the letters and exponents wasn’t any easier than the pentagons.

Instead of having the vertical angle of the triangle pointing up, we decided to flip it and put the text in the center of the triangle in that orientation in order for the text to have more room.

Our original print of the ten sided die was much smaller than intended. (More of the size of what an actual die should be). You couldn’t read the text and was much smaller in size compared to it’s 12 sided die counterpart.

Scaled it by 2.5 so it would be a similar height to the other die and once all the engraving was complete there was the set of five dice!