Astronomy Task

Last week, our family attended our first ever professional escape room. We went to The Escape Game in Pidgeon Forge, TN; it was great fun! It also gave me several ideas of things to add to the Harry Potter escape room that I’ve been working on. One thing that happened several times in The Escape Game was that we’d unlock a cabinet, and get a few pieces of a puzzle. Then we’d unlock another cabinet and get a few more pieces for the same puzzle. This, for some reason is quite exciting! I did add this element to the Harry Potter escape room…I may write about it another time.

I also realized that it’s pretty fun if there’s a switch involved in a task.

The problem? I’m not particularly smart when it comes to circuits, robots, etc. I KNOW they’re not that complicated…but I didn’t feel all that inspired to create anything complicated.

The idea that I came up with, instead, was to create a constellation task (for Astronomy Class, of course). The girls will find a board with a bunch of lights (stars) lit on it. They’ll also have a constellation map (I just found this online for free and printed it up). If they press a button, half the stars will turn off to reveal a constellation. They’ll have to identify the constellation, and doing so will help them unlock a later task.

To create this, I found a scrap piece of plywood in the garage. I drilled holes in the plywood in the shape of the constellation, and drilled extra holes as well. I used one of the battery-pack light strings and filled the holes of the constellation, and used the other string light set to fill the extra holes. I plan to leave the “other” batter pack with the switch exposed so that the girls will hopefully figure out to turn it off.

When they turn the “extra” stars off, it will reveal a constellation!

So cool, right?

Well, I thought so.

But here’s the thing: I KNOW which constellation I created and STILL had a very hard time matching it between the board and the constellation map.

Now, I am one of the least visually oriented people you will ever meet, so maybe it’s not as hard as I think?

There are also things the girls can do to help narrow down which constellation it will be. Like, they’ll know how many letters are in the name of the constellation, and they’ll know how many stars are in the constellation.

I’ve also created a mix of pretty dang difficult puzzles and much easier puzzles, so it’s okay if this is a harder one. They are allowed to ask for clues if needed.

Either way, another fun little class for the Escape Room is complete!