Claw Game Maker lesson plans
Each one is a class period with everything to run it: a teacher plan, a student worksheet, an exit ticket with answers, and the standards it meets. Students need no account, and a free class saves their work.
Claw Game Maker: Why Did the Bear Drop?
Everyone has lost a bear to a claw machine. Students play one with real physics, and when the bear slips a replay draws the forces: its weight, the push from each prong, and the friction that push could make. On the Grip Bench they turn the grip down until the bear slides and up until it holds, and find the line where friction runs out. By the end they can say what holds a prize up, and what sets the limit.
FreeClaw Game Maker: Squeeze or Cradle?
A stronger grip is not always a better one. Students bench a capsule ball and find it holds at a grip far below what friction allows, because the curled tips close under it and carry it on their shape. They straighten the tips and it slips; they hook the pads and the bear is cradled at a grip that would never squeeze it. By the end they can say when a claw squeezes and when it cradles, and what each needs.
FreeClaw Game Maker: Is This Machine Fair?
Is the claw machine rigged, or is it luck? Students predict how many of twenty careful robot players will win the starter machine, then run them and watch the wins come in. Twenty more plays give a different number, and the sheet asks why. They turn the carry grip down the way a real operator can and run again. By the end they can state a win rate from repeated trials, say what a prediction is worth, and read an operator's settings.
FreeClaw Game Maker: Build a Fair Machine
The starter machine is unfair: big bears and boxed toys that its weak, bare-metal claw cannot lift, and the honest check says so by name. Students fix it one change at a time, checking after each: grips, tips, pad angle, prongs, the pile. Then they tune it so careful robots win about one play in three, and share it for classmates to play. By the end they have run a design loop against a real constraint and a real test.