This May, I am walking in the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's Walk MS in Newtown, PA in support of my scientist friend, GZC. I met GZC in a cancer class at Yale over 10 years ago. Since then, we've gone camping, played (or attempted to play) ultimate frisbee/softball/basketball/volleyball, and celebrated many Galentine's Days together. She was instrumental--literally--in helping me
make my own mittens. As you'll see later, she also indirectly provided inspiration for the Spot it! game I made.
I was with GZC on the day she was diagnosed with MS six years ago, and because she is a scientist, she sought out as much information about the disease as possible. The National MS Society proved to be a valuable resource, which is why I'm walking again this year to raise money for the Society.
Before continuing on, please take a minute to visit
my donation page at Walk MS. Your support--whether it's only $10 or $20, or walking with us--will help fund research and provide resources to help people with MS.
... And now, for the fun and games!
Spot it! (apparently also known as Dobble) is an amazingly simple game. It consists of a deck of coaster-shaped cards with pictures on them. The basic premise is that on any two cards, there will be exactly one picture that is on both cards. Find the picture.
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| Pick any 2 cards. They will have exactly 1 picture in common. |
So many themed versions! But surprisingly, no science. |
While this game is aimed to entertain 3-year-olds, I (not a 3-year-old) was fascinated by the fact that it mathematically works. The deck has 55 cards and there are 8 pictures on each card. And every 👏 single 👏 pair 👏 of cards has
exactly 1 match??!! THAT'S AMAZING!
Other people on the internet--mainly engineers and math teachers--also wondered about the inner workings of the game. This person wrote a little about it and included "solution" sheets for making your own:
https://radiganengineering.com/2013/01/spot-it-howd-they-do-that
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| A sample of the solution sheet for putting 6 pictures on each of 31 cards. |
I want to play this game, so I need to find a child for whom I can get this...
GZC has a young, inquisitive daughter, GZC
E, who was approaching the age where she could play this game. Naturally, I went looking for a science-themed version of Spot it!, but it didn't seem to exist. Perfect! That means I'll have to create it!
I started brainstorming... my Google history shows these searches:
- September 6, 2016: "make your own spot it game"
- September 20, 2016: "spot it diy"
- November 3, 2016: "spot it"
- August 10, 2017: "spot-it diy"
Clearly, brainstorming takes me a really long time.
The first step was getting round coasters. You can buy them in bulk at
Amazon. Or... In my case, I happened to attend a departmental retreat/conference in October of 2016, where coasters were laid out in front of each seat in long lines of tables. At the end of the conference, I tried to discreetly collect at least 31 coasters. A fellow conference attendee, SH, asked WTH 🤔I was doing. After meekly/awkwardly describing the concept of making a game for a 3-year-old 😳, SH enthusiastically joined in and helped me compile a mass of coasters. Step 1 completed!
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| Coasters, coasters, coasters everywhere! |
This deck of coasters sat in my living room for close to a year before I started up the project again in August of 2017. GZC actually gave birth to a second daughter, GZCV, before I finished this project.
Finding 31 unique science-related pictures...
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| Can you guess which day I collected pictures? |
What does science look like? I challenge you to come up with more than 10 images. And try to span different branches of science. And don't choose anything that would scare a young child. And the images should have a Creative Commons (CC) license.
GZC's PhD is in immunobiology, so I made sure to include an antibody (which is sadly the extent of my knowledge of the field). Another obvious choice was DNA because GZC
E's middle name is Rosalind, after Rosalind Franklin. (Unfortunately, the
photo most associated with Franklin's work is not under CC license.) Here are the rest of the images I ended up using:
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| A is for Antibody (and Astronaut and Atom) |
I wrote up more specifics on the process further down, but the here is the final product being playtested by GZC
E and RC (aka GZC
C). GZC
E caught on very quickly and often beat the grown-ups at finding matching pictures. It's a bit premature to explain a lot of these concepts to a very young child (props to RC for his patience in trying, though), but luckily children don't need to understand what pictures represent to be able to match them. My hope is that one day, when GZC
E is a junior in high school, she'll see the Mandelbrot set and have a "Wait! I've seen that before!" moment. It'll also be interesting to see how science will be updated/outdated in 10 years.
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| How do you explain Pavlov's dog to a 3-year-old? |
Methods section
Every good project write-up needs a detailed methods section, to ensure reproducibility. Hopefully I've provided enough detail, tips I learned the way, and inspiration for you to want to make your own, either for yourself or your own budding scientist.
The process and materials below assume that you are putting 6 pictures on each of the 31 cards. I found that number to be manageable in terms of finding enough pictures, fitting pictures on the card, and the amount of cutting without feeling overwhelmed.
This link provides pdf sheets for other options:
- 2 pictures per card, 3 cards, 3 unique pictures (Order 1)
- 3 pictures per card, 7 cards, 7 unique pictures (Order 2)
- 4 pictures per card, 13 cards, 13 unique pictures (Order 3)
- 6 pictures per card, 31 cards, 31 unique pictures (Order 5)
- 8 pictures per card, 57 cards, 57 unique pictures (Order 7)
- 12 pictures per card, 133 cards, 133 unique pictures (Order 11)
Finding pictures
Google's image search tool has additional filters that allow you narrow down the type of picture you're looking for, including the usage rights associated with the image. Here is an example
image search for "science", filtered to only show images that can be modified for noncommercial use.
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| Click on "Tools" on the right side to access additional image search filters. |
Making stickers
After finding 31 suitable pictures, I put 6 copies of each picture onto a label template. I used 3M's 2"x4" labels (10 labels per 8.5"x"11 sheet), but
Avery's version is also compatible with the template that I posted at my
GitHub page. If you want just stick with the pictures that I used, I included the four label sheets at that link as well.
Cutting
Use scissors. Put on a brainless TV show in the background. Cut the label sheet into smaller sections first, rather than trying to maneuver the entire sheet all the time. Oh, you were looking for real pro-tips? Read on...
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| So much cutting... |
*Pro-tip* Pre-cut the label backing
Before cutting out a set of pictures, partially peel the label and make a couple longs cuts in the backing paper where the middle of the pictures will be once you replace the label. This way, once you cut out the picture, you can simply "crack" the backing paper and the label will come right off, instead of trying to pry the label from its backing along the edge.
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| By making "pre-cuts" in the label backing, peeling the sticker is a breeze. |
*Pro-tip* Create a grid of pictures
I took a sheet of paper and created a 4-by-8 grid to organize and number the pictures. I can't imagine how to keep track of them otherwise.
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| All organized and ready to go! |
Sticking the pictures onto the coasters
This step should be pretty intuitive. I went through the list of which pictures belong on each card, and crossed each one off as I went along. I generally arranged the six pictures on each card before sticking them on, to make sure they all fit and were placed semi-randomly.
*Pro-tip* Make cards in batches and look for patterns
Here's an example of the first 10 cards:
Card 1 [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 25]
Card 2 [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 25]
Card 3 [10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 25]
Card 4 [15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 25]
Card 5 [20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25]
Card 6 [0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 26]
Card 7 [1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26]
Card 8 [2, 7, 12, 17, 22, 26]
Card 9 [3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 26]
Card 10 [4, 9, 14, 19, 24, 26]
Each of first five cards uses picture #25, so lay out five cards and put sticker #25 on each. You'll also notice that pictures #0-24 each appear once, so you can just slap each one of those across the five cards. The second batch of five cards also has its own unique pattern, but I'll leave that for you to figure out as a brain exercise.
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| Cards are all done! |
Packing it all up
I found a box that happened to fit these coasters. (Hooray for hoarding boxes!) I also included instructions for variations of the game, and a reference sheet naming all the pictures so that GZC
E can google them once she learns how to
type ask Alexa to google things.
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| Tada! Finished product in its box, with instructions |
Closing notes
This will be the 4th year that I will be walking with GZC and her family in Walk MS, and I hope you'll
support us through your (tax-free!) contribution and/or by walking with us. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society does excellent work and is a great resource. I know this because GZC said so, and she's a scientist, so she definitely knows.
Thanks to SH for helping me collecting coasters at the retreat, to JM for proofreading, to ML for her social media expertise (hashtags can be overwhelming!), and to GZC for proofreading and allowing me to share her story.
