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[Virex]

If you ever need any help on the chemical side, just drop me a PM and I'll see what I can do. Having a chemistry* student to back you up may help.


*Well, actually chemical engineering, but I doubt you're going to make Chemical Plant Tycoon or something similar.

[Supermikhail]

Well, technically I'm a chemistry student myself, but a lousy, unmotivated student, so I'm going to hold you to that.

[eerr]

Clearly, Doctors must learn all they need to know from Trauma Center, Second opinion.

Including the ability to snipe little alien buggers out of someone's liver.

[Virex]

Well, technically I'm a chemistry student myself, but a lousy, unmotivated student, so I'm going to hold you to that.

Sorry, misinterpreted the word "term paper" as indicating that you were still in high school... 

[Grakelin]

@Grakelin: I thought it was a generally accepted fact that video games improve hand/eye coordination, and not just for surgeons.

Source?

Seriously, I've heard it, too, but I've never actually seen a scientific report which confirmed stuff. And general knowledge isn't really reliable knowledge. It was general knowledge for the longest time that the Earth was surrounded by a set of crystal spheres, for instance, and that the Buffalo would never run out.

[Supermikhail]

Well, as a prospective scientist (not really) I can report to you:

Have you ever seen people manipulate a computer mouse for the first time? Did you see the difficulty which they had with moving the cursor correctly, even though they didn't suffer from hand muscle atrophy, had stereoscopic vision and full colour range perception (or whatever else)? Compare that to yourself. I think that's some hand-to-eye coordination you have.

Hey, Virex, actually, just for curiosity's and fairness' sake, I'd like to know how far American students get in their chemical education while in school (I've heard there isn't such a subject, but in terms of concepts).

[Talanic]

Source for video games and doctors:  http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2008-08-18-video-games-learning_N.htm

That site cites a number of different studies - so it's not just one crackpot making wild claims.  Should be a good jumping-off point for later.

As far as numbers from the Grand Theft Childhood book, I can't remember them all anymore - it's been over a year and the book's in another library; it'd take a week or more to get it.  However, I recall that they found that nearly all kids in the study played video games.  The few who did not, had the worst grades and highest instances of delinquency (possibly due to being too poor to own game systems...) but that sample was too small in size to be truly statistically significant.

The only other spikes in delinquency that they could correlate to video game use were middle school kids who played M-rated games, alone, for 3+ hours per day.  Kids in that bracket had about a 10-15% greater chance to be depressed and delinquent, but whether the video game playing led to the depression, or the depression caused the kids to play more video games, we have no idea.

[Virex]

Hey, Virex, actually, just for curiosity's and fairness' sake, I'd like to know how far American students get in their chemical education while in school (I've heard there isn't such a subject, but in terms of concepts).

I wouldn't have the faintest to be fair, as I'm dutch (no I'm not THAT kind of chemist).

[Supermikhail]

Why did I have to assume that?
So, how is it going in Netherlands?

Also, have you or somebody else here heard of the game called "Chemicus" (which apparently doesn't have a wikipedia article, so I don't even know what to link to), which is a chemistry based adventure? The only previous acquaintance I've had with it was when I went to a retail store, and it was on the "best" (everything on it was in fancy boxes) shelf, and cost more than any other game (without, after looking at a Youtube walkthrough, any merit to deserve it). Now I'm on Linux and I've had enough not-running-under-wine-games-hard-for-me-to-remove-after-that.

[Talanic]

High school was a while ago and I went to a private school, so I'm afraid I can't tell you that much for certain.  But we did go into chemical reactions and equations, the structure of the atom, bonding, and various other topics.  Even went through an experiment in which we stripped the copper off a penny, then caused it to go through several other reactions until we had pure copper precipitates.

[Supermikhail]

Oh! Then, I hope you can remember how to make alcohol from petroleum. (Whether, and how far you went into organics)

[Virex]

I doubt it. At least at my high school, I don't recall going into additions of that kind (you are thinking about cracking the oil, aren't you?)

[Supermikhail]

No-no, not that far. We just had a table with different organics and how they were related. I think... Oh, crap, first - dehydrogenation, then water. I thought I gave a one-step question.

Something like that?

[Talanic]

I'm pretty sure my high school didn't go into that either...

Then again, I'm in Wisconsin, drinking capitol of the USA, so it may have been akin to teaching Arabs about sand.

[Virex]

No-no, not that far. We just had a table with different organics and how they were related. I think... Oh, crap, first - dehydrogenation, then water. I thought I gave a one-step question.

Something like that?

Oh you were talking about any alcohol. I thought you were specifically thinking about making ethanol, in which case you'd have to smash the petroleum into small pieces first before reassembling