Crazy Gears

What is it

The Crazy Gears app from Seven Academy is a tantalizing puzzle game that requires children to manipulate gears, chains, rods and pulleys to pull themselves through each level. By working out how to use the tools they are able to slide the screen across to reveal the next level. This helps to communicate how different mechanisms affect one another when constructing a machine. Each reasoning challenge was carefully designed to adhere to the theories of educational technology pioneer, mathematician, computer scientist, and designer of the first programming language for children, Seymour Papert.

“The best use of games is to leverage their tendency to enhance learning”– Papert

As a child, Papert fell in love with gears. Their movement fascinated him in every way and inspired his career. As Seven Academy explain:

“Crazy Gears was conceived not only as a tribute to him, but with the hope of providing a child with the inspiration to discover and understand the physical properties of mechanisms found in their everyday lives. Such complex notions include, tension, motion, and gravity. We achieve this by encouraging the child to manipulate the objects in each level to determine how they work together to accomplish a goal. Interactions with technology give kids the power to construct their understanding of STEM subjects in meaningful ways. Here we engage them in play that does just that!”

The app includes no explicit instructions and no rules.

STEM* TOPICS EXPLORED
• Gears
• Mechanical Systems (simple and complex)
• Action and Reaction
• Motion (circular, rotary, and reciprocating)
• Ratios
• Tension
• Torque and Speed
• Mechanical Advantage

Crazy Gears is certified COPPA compliant by PRIVO.

*STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

See our full article on how the Crazy Gears app encourage an interest in science in boys and girls.

What our experts think

Boys and girls alike absolutely loved solving the Crazy Gears puzzles! They were keen to reach the next level, and you could see the gears grinding in their own heads as they worked to figure out solutions. As they progressed through the game, the increasingly difficult levels meant that the children continued to be challenged, and were able to build on their knowledge at each stage (for example, learning to connect a rotating gear to a stationary gear, in order to make the second one turn).

It was great seeing children practice their problem solving skills by experimenting with the wheels, chains, gears, and pulleys, to work out the puzzles. This also helps give children an understanding of how these mechanisms work, which are useful principles in Science and technology. We were equally delighted to see how much this appealed to both boys and girls.

It would be even better if...

Children often asked what level they were on, or how many levels there were, so it would be good to have this displayed on screen more clearly all the time for them to see how they have progressed (the stages e.g. 5/61 are briefly displayed at the start of each new level at the bottom right).