Minecraft, the $2.5 billion open-source video game, is one of the most popular games on the planet. It is famous in part for its incredible user autonomy and countless creative worlds and maps. And now, chemistry nerds and parents alike will be happy to learn that young chemists from the University of Hull in Yorkshire, England, have developed a Minecraft world that's nothing but chemistry.
MolCraft, as the new world is called, is populated with the molecules necessary to create proteins. Players begin in the U.K.-based Royal Society of Chemistry, where they amble through a hall of alcoves and choose a door through which to begin their adventure. The doors are labeled everything from Myoglobin (a protein that binds oxygen and iron) to Asparagine (one of the most common and critical amino acids). But don't worry: Once you open the door, you are transported to a way cooler place than Myoglobin makes it sound like.
Once she goes through the door, the user finds herself outside, with the only nearby structure being a massive formation representing a protein. It is built out of the same kind of blocks familiar to Minecraft users, but for those who have never played, it's not far off from Lego construction. The blocks are large and distinct from one another, making construction slightly inelegant but very straightforward and efficient.
The user can fly through the structure, examining pieces of the spiraling protein as she goes. Iron and amino acids are symbolized by treasure chests and weapons, usable to build and structure proteins. The user, then, becomes a life-builder.
MolCraft was developed by undergraduate students, as part of a chemistry project at the University of Hull.
This isn't the first time Minecraft has been used as a teaching tool. The software is already used in U.S. classrooms to teach coding and game design, math, writing, languages, quantum mechanics, history, and more.
You can watch a demo of MolCraft here, and download it, here.
