What to expect

Welcome to Year 2 of SUPERCHARGE! If you are returning from last year, welcome back. If you are new to SUPERCHARGE this year, we are glad you joined us. Whether you are new or returning, this will be a fun and exciting year. This year's topics include solar energy, micro:bit programming, electric motors, and solar-tracking robot systems. 

All of the projects this year are intended to be group projects. Work together with your friends, make new friends, and have fun! If you have any questions or get stuck, you can ask your friends, teachers, or us. We are a team of students and teachers at Illinois State University, and we’d love to hear from you.  

All of the activities this year relate to energy in some way. Today, we will play a card game about building your own city’s electric grid. To build your city’s electric grid, you will need to think about the cost of each generator, the amount of energy and pollution that each generator produces, and what type of geography works best for each generator. 

Connections

In today's card game, you will use different forms of energy generation to build your electric grid. Next week, we will start using the micro:bit microcomputer to measure different forms of energy in and around your classroom. 

Materials

• 2 Decks of SUPERCHARGE Grid Game cards

• 1 deck of 12 shuffled Environment Cards

• 1 deck of 90 shuffled Business Cards and Energy Generation Cards

• Scratch paper and pencil (1 per person)

Instructions

The SUPERCHARGE Grid Game is a card game for 2-5 players where each player draws an Environment, and then builds their own city with the Business and Energy Generation cards. The purpose of the game is to finish with the most money while minimizing environmental degradation.

Setup:

1. There are two decks of cards. The first deck is an Environment card deck. Each player draws two Environment cards. Look at your cards and keep one of them. Lay down your chosen Environment card face-up in front of you, and discard the other. The Environment card you have chosen is the environment in which you will build your city.

2. The second deck is filled with Energy Generation cards and Business cards. You will use these cards to build your city. To begin, each player draws 5 cards. You can look at your cards.

3. Every player starts with 0 Megawatt-hours (MWh) of Energy, $50 of Money, and 100 Environmental Points (EvP).

Play:

1. The youngest player gets the first turn. Play proceeds clockwise around the group. Each turn represents one year in your city. The game is over after everyone has had 5 turns. 

2. When it is your turn, your goal is to build your city by laying down Energy Generation cards and/or Business cards face-up next to your Environment card. There is no minimum or maximum number of cards you can play per turn; however, you need to have enough Money, Energy, and Environmental Points available to lay down a card (described below).  

3. Energy Generation cards cost Money and Environment Points to play. In subsequent rounds, after they are played, they do not cost Money or Environmental Points. However, they produce Energy in every round, including the round in which they are played. For each Environment, there is one Energy Generation card that cannot be played because the energy source is not suitable for that environment. The Energy Generation card that cannot be played with each Environment is:

Forest: Solar 

Beach: Coal

Mountain: Natural Gas

Valley: Wind

Tundra: Hydroelectric

Desert: Nuclear

4. Business cards cost Energy and Environmental Points to play. In subsequent turns, they do not cost Environmental Points after they are played. However, in every subsequent turn, they consume Energy and produce Money (Profit) after they are played. In every turn, your Energy Generation cards combined must produce enough Energy for all your Businesses.  

5. If you run out of Environmental Points, your city is not inhabitable, and you are out of the game. If you run out of Money, you can simply wait until the next turn, when your Businesses will produce more Money.

6. At the end of each turn, write down how much Money and Environmental Points you have on your scratch paper. Money and Environmental Points carry over from one turn to the next, but Energy does not. 

7. After each turn, you may discard one Energy Generation or Business card, and you may draw as many cards as necessary so that you have five cards again.

Game Over:

1. The game is over after 5 rounds (representing 5 years of city development) or when there are no more Energy Generation or Business cards left to draw.

2. Add up your total amount of Money and Environmental Points. Each Environmental Point left over at the end of the game is worth $3 of Money.

3. The player with the highest total wins the game.

Optional Extensions:

The Electric Grid Game is intended to be simple. But you can revise the game's rules to make it more realistic. Make sure all players agree to the revised rules before you start! Here are some ideas:

1. The Energy Generators and/or Businesses cost Environmental Points in each turn, not just when they are first played.

2. Create a battery card, which costs Money but boosts the output of the renewable energy sources (wind and solar) by 5 MWh each turn.

3. Create a new Energy Generation card, like a Hydrogen Fuel Cell or Nuclear Fusion. Choose the Energy, Cost, and Environmental Cost.

Think about it

Today, as an introduction to SUPERCHARGE, we played a card game about building your own city’s electric grid using energy sources. All of the SUPERCHARGE activities this year relate in some way to energy. Most of the activities will also involve clever use of the micro:bit micro-computer device, which we will start next week!

1. Which energy generation types did you find to be most useful in the game?

2. Did you change the rules of the game? What were your revised rules, and how did they work? We’d like to hear from you, so please let us know! 

Feedback Link

 Click on the link above to share your feedback on this activity.

Next Time

In next week’s activity, we will start using the micro:bit micro-computer. You will program a micro:bit device to measure different forms of energy in your classroom and around your school. If you’ve never programmed before, don’t worry! We’ll show you how.

Image credits
Valley: https://www.inklestudios.com/
Tundra: https://www.freepik.com/

Riverside: https://www.vecteezy.com/

Plains: https://www.vecteezy.com/
Mountain: https://www.istockphoto.com/

Forrest: https://www.freevector.com/
Desert: https://www.vectorstock.com/
Beachside: https://www.freepik.com/
Solar field: https://www.shutterstock.com/

Coal: https://www.shutterstock.com/ 

Natural Gas: https://www.shutterstock.com/ 

Nuclear: https://www.shutterstock.com/ 

Hydraulic Dam: https://www.shutterstock.com/

Battery: https://www.shutterstock.com/