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Elasticity Solver in Minecraft for Learning Mechanics of Materials by Gaming

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Abstract

Video games have emerged as a medium for learning by creating engaging environments, encouraging creative and deep thinking, and exposing learners to complex problems. Unfortunately, even though there are increasing examples of video games for many basic science and engineering concepts, similar efforts for higher level engineering concepts such as mechanics of materials are still lacking. Here, we present a mesh-free elasticity solver implementation in the popular video game Minecraft, a sandbox game where players can build any structure they can imagine. Modifications to the game, called mods in the Minecraft community, are a common feature of this platform. Our elasticity mod computes the stress and deformation of arbitrary structures and colors the blocks with a heat map to visualize the result of the analysis. We used this mod in the Honors section of two courses: Basic Mechanics I Statics, Mechanics of Materials. This teaching tip describes our experience developing and deploying this tool to encourage its use in biomedical engineering classrooms. A future goal is to engage the broader audience Minecraft players.

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Data Availability

The code and video tutorials are available through the Investigator’s website https://engineering.purdue.edu/tepolelab/minecraft.

Code Availability

The code is available through https://engineering.purdue.edu/tepolelab/minecraft and https://github.com/abuganza/minecraft_sph.

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Acknowledgments

See Funding below.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, Civil Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation award 1911346 to Adrian Buganza Tepole.

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Author notes

  1. Zachariah Beck and Brandon Alpert have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Zachariah Beck, Brandon Alpert & Adrian B. Tepole

  2. Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Adrian B. Tepole

  3. Department of Education, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Alexander Bowman & William R. Watson

Authors
  1. Zachariah Beck
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  2. Brandon Alpert
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  3. Alexander Bowman
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  4. William R. Watson
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  5. Adrian B. Tepole
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Contributions

BA, ZB implemented code, developed examples, and wrote the manuscript. AB helped with example and challenge designs for the class implementation and wrote manuscript. WRW oversaw the pedagocial approach and wrote the manuscript. ABT conceptualized the study and oversaw the implementation of code and taught the class where the code was used.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adrian B. Tepole.

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Nothing to declare.

Ethical Approval

IRB protocol IRB-2023-1063, exempt study, approved student data use agreement.

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Not applicable

Consent for Publication

IRB protocol IRB-2023-1063, exempt study, approved student data use agreement.

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Beck, Z., Alpert, B., Bowman, A. et al. Elasticity Solver in Minecraft for Learning Mechanics of Materials by Gaming. Biomed Eng Education 4, 129–135 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43683-023-00128-0

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