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Black Box
Inventor: Eric Solomon
Players: 2, age 10 and up
Box size: 25,5 x 18,5 x 5,5 cm (10 x 7,3 x 2,1 inch)
Contents: playing map, 5 glass marbles, 32 coloured pieces made of wood,
pad with Black Box-diagrams, rule book
Story
BLACK BOX - a term used by scientists to describe unknown, mysterious quantity; an object or system that operates in an unknown way, even though outward "reactions" can be observed when stimulating the Black Box.What triggers these reactions is scarcely revealed.
In the game BLACK BOX you are to determine the compound of a molecule enclosed in the Black Box by shooting rays into the box. Observing in which way rays are diffracted by the molecule enables the scientist (one of the players) to use the results to determine the contents of the Black Box, in this case the structure of the molecule.
Gameplay
In this game the players have different tasks: player one marks 4 squares on his Black Box-diagram which marks the location of a molecule. Player two wants to find out where the molecule is.Player two "shoots" a ray into the Black Box. After each shot player two gets information from player one what happens with his ray.
There are in principle 3 different possibilities: the ray doesn´t come out of the black box (it is absorbed), the ray comes out on another column than it entered (it is deflected) or the ray comes out where it went into the black box (it is reflected).
A ray may hit the molecule in a way that more than one of the mentioned possibilities occurs.
After each shot player two marks the information he got at the numbers around the playing map. Therefore he uses the coloured pieces. Each coloured piece counts one point.
After one match the players change the tasks. If two matches have been played the player with less points wins the game.