Thousands of years ago, early humans probably wondered what the wind was. You cannot see the wind; it is invisible. However, you can feel it blow by or hear it rush past your ear. You can see how it affects other things, like a leaf blowing through the air or a powerful tornado causing damage. Not as long ago, we pondered the mysteries of gravity. Similar to the wind, it cannot be seen. What we could clearly see was how gravity influenced everything on Earth. Observing how gravity interacted with other things is how we understood gravity in the first place.

A similar thing is happening with a concept called Dark Matter. We can calculate the mass of the universe. However, there is much more mass than we can "see." We call this unknown mass dark matter because it does not interact with the electromagnetic spectrum, which makes our ability to measure it very difficult. However, we can see its influence on the different cosmic phenomena. This helps us understand it better even though we cannot see or measure it directly.

This game takes the game Newcomb and adds a feature of "blinding" the other team by covering the net, helping us understand this mysterious phenomenon. The students will act as dark matter interacting with matter (the ball). This game will act as an impressionistic metaphor for the students to understand how we can know something even when we cannot directly see it.

Materials: 

·      A large play area

·      A volleyball net

·      Several volleyballs

o   Use volleyballs that are three different colors (for the lower elementary version)

§  You can use soft dodgeballs if you don't have different colored volleyballs.

·      Use the green, blue, and red colors

·      Lots of fabric to drape over the volleyball net

·      Optional

o   Scorekeeping device

Minimum Number of Students Needed:

While you could play this game with as few as four people, it is more fun with an entire class.

Age: All Ages