Tears of the Kingdom enables limitless building fun with the Ultrahand skill. Even engineering students are now benefiting from this
Few features in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are as much in the spotlight as the game’s extremely powerful physics engine. Thanks to the Ultrahand
ability, fans can create their own constructions from countless components, which are then simulated in a physically comprehensible way – such as vehicles, combat robots or a flamethrower penis.
Now people are even playing Zelda at university. But this has nothing to do with the fact that the students don’t want to listen to the professors’ explanations and prefer to unpack the Switch. No, this time the professor is playing himself!
Teaching content in a fun way
Ryan Sochol is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
and also Director of the Bioinspired Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory – wow, we’d love to see that business card! Anyway: Sochol has come up with a very special learning unit at the University of Maryland under the name of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to Machine Design
Using the physics-based skills in Tears of the Kingdom, he wants to teach mechanical engineering students to understand complex processes and other issues in a playful way.
Now let’s be honest: wouldn’t you sign up for the course immediately if you saw this cool invitation video from Professor Sochol?
What surprised me as I played through was the unexpected focus on machine design and engineering. The game includes a number of different types of machine elements such as rockets, motorized wheels and propellers. And the interesting thing is that each of these different machine elements uses energy differently.
Ryan Sochol
The course works as follows: The students are divided into teams of three to four people each. They then receive a Nintendo Switch, a Pro Controller and, of course, the game itself – they are allowed to keep this equipment for one semester.
After a settling-in period, during which the teams can play TotK normally to familiarize themselves with the basics, Professor Sochol gives them various tasks to solve. The final test is the construction of their own prototype, and no, that doesn’t mean amateurish stick-on-board crafting like we do, ahem…
Tears of the Kingdom is being combined by Sochol with industry-related CAD software so that the experience gained from this project can be used in the best possible way in other areas later on.
(The rush is great): According to Sochol, he even had to cancel students because so many interested people wanted to register for the course that he couldn’t cope on his own. In order to sift out the participants, he quickly subjected them to a The Legend of Zelda aptitude test. In the end, however, a random generator made the decision to keep things fair.
What do you think of Professor Sochol’s idea to turn Tears of the Kingdom into a serious study project? Would you have liked to see such innovative initiatives in your time at university or did you even have similar initiatives? If so, please tell us about them! Where? In our comments section, of course!
