Assignment - Make an Element Cycle Game

In addition to the water cycle, there are many elements that naturally cycle through the Earth's atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere. For this project, you and a partner will make a game like the Water Cycle Game we played earlier. You can choose one of the following elements:

  • Carbon (simplest)
  • Phosphorus
  • Nitrogen
  • Silica (most complex)

Part 1 - Cycle Diagram

  1. Using reliable sources, find out the important stores/sinks of your element throughout the environment. You should check in with the teacher to make sure that you are not missing anything important.
  2. Draw (by hand or on a computer) a diagram that illustrates your cycle. Label all the important stores and sinks of the element.
  3. Draw arrows indicating how the element moves between the stores and sinks. Include a label describing the motion.
  4. Submit the diagram, and links to the webpage(s) you used as your source(s).

You should not start the second and third parts until the teacher has marked your Part 1, as there may be changes needed to your diagram.

Part 2 - Percentages

  1. Find a reliable source that shows the relative percentage of the world's supply of the element that is in each of the stores/sinks in your diagram. For some cycles, it may be impossible to find reliable numbers. If so, please talk to the teacher about guess-timating percentages.
  2. Submit the percentages, and full links to the webpage(s) you used as your source(s).

Part 3 - Making the Game

For every store/sink, create a page like in the original game with dice drawn from 1 to 6 along the left side.

  1. At the top, put the name of the source/sink (i.e. glaciers).
  2. Under the name, draw a picture of the source/sink.
  3. Beside each die, write the location where that roll will send you (i.e. glacier, glacier, glacier, ground water, cloud, river).
  4. Separately, write up a the justification for the number of each location you used. For example, why are there 3 glaciers and only 1 cloud?

Extensions

If you want to add something extra to your complete game for Part 3, you can add one of the following extensions to your game:
  • Using non-6-sided dice. D&D uses a variety of multi-sided dice.
  • Using a different method (not dice) to deciding how to get from one station to the next.
  • Adding other elements to the game (i.e. actions to perform at each station, Internet videos to watch, songs to sing, challenges to master, etc.)