Here’s what the simulation does.
The experiment. It teaches the GCSE topic reactions of acids with metals — metal + acid → salt + hydrogen. Four test tubes sit in a rack on a lab bench. The pupil pours acid into them, drops a different metal into each, watches what happens, tests the gas, and names the salt produced. There’s a bottle of acid to the side (switchable between hydrochloric and sulfuric) and a tray of four metal samples in front: magnesium, zinc, iron, and copper.
The chemistry it’s built to show. The four metals are chosen to straddle hydrogen in the reactivity series. Magnesium reacts vigorously, zinc steadily, iron slowly, and copper not at all — because copper sits below hydrogen and can’t displace it. So the pupil sees the whole point of the reactivity series play out: more reactive metal, more bubbles, more heat. Switching the acid changes the salt from a chloride to a sulfate while the pattern stays the same.
The flow. It runs as a six-step sequence: pour the acid, add the metal, watch the reaction, test the gas, name the salt, then build a reactivity chart. During the reaction a timer counts six seconds while bubbles rise and a thermometer shows the temperature climbing (these are exothermic). The gas test lowers a lit splint to the tube mouth, and if hydrogen is present you get the squeaky pop — sound and a visual burst. Copper skips the gas test and the naming question entirely, because there’s nothing there to test. Naming the salt is a two-option multiple choice: the correct salt versus the same metal with the wrong ending, which is the discrimination pupils actually lose marks on.
The payoff. After all four metals, a results chart builds up: a bar for each metal ordered by how fast it bubbled, from which the reactivity order is derived from the pupil’s own observations, plus a plain-language conclusion about why copper did nothing.
Who it’s for. It’s a ClassAdapt simulation, so it’s built SEND-first for classroom projection: high-contrast by default, large readouts, and a full accessibility menu (Irlen overlays, colour-blindness filters, reading ruler, dyslexia spacing, text scaling, reduce/slow motion, a buttons-only mode that replaces every drag with a single press, a sound toggle, and aria-live announcements throughout).