from the silk road to the circuit board

 

A playful learning approach using chess to introduce context, theory and practical applications of STEAM

Preview Curriculum
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Outline of Curriculum

Module 1

Origins and Interconnections

  • The Silk Road, Gupta Empire and the Birth of Chess
  • Mandala, ancient architecture, and the basis of the chessboard
  • The board, the pieces, and the rules of play
  • Symbolic Representation, introduction to number theory ‘invention of zero,’ exponential growth

Module 2

The Education of Emperors

    • Greeks, Persia and Rome; Conquest and Collaborations
    • Persian Epics introduce chess in literature
    • From Shah Mat  to Checkmate
    • Primer on Pythagorus, Plato, Euclid and Aristotle

Module 3

The House of Wisdom

  • Emperors obsessed with chess; the Abassids and the Golden Age of Islam
  • Khayaam’s triangle in Islamic Architecture
  • Al-Suli and the Invention of the Chess Puzzle
  • The Age of Translation from Aristotle to the invention of Algebra

Module 4

Crusades, Cross-pollination, Crossing the Ocean

    • The Introduction of Chess into Europe
    • The Trivium and Quadrivium and Birth of The European University
    • Art, Power and Engineering; The Printing Press, Cathedrals, Clocks, and Celestial Navigation
    • Alchemy and the Art of Memory
    • Opening Theory; Ruy Lopez revolutionizes chess

Module 5

The Court and the Cosmos

  • Professional chess in the king’s court
  • Patronage, Perspective, Probability; The Medici, DaVinci and The Birth of Banking
  • The Birth of the Scientific Method
  • Piece development and plan-making

Module 6

A New World Order

    • Chess at the epicenter of the Age of Reason (and Revolution)
    • The Enlightenment Philosophers
    • Kings of Calculus
    • Euler; Magic Squares and Knight’s Tours
    • Nature Abhors a Vacuum
    • Pawns structure and endgames

Module 7

Steam and the Machine

  • The first chess automaton ushers in the machine age
  • Pioneers of power from Volta to Hertz
  • Updating beliefs; Gauss, Bayesian Inference, and non-Euclidean geometry
  • Utilitarianism, Positivism, Phenomenology and Pure Mathematics
  • Swashbuckling sacrifices, ‘The Immortal Game’

Module 8

From the Railroad to Relativity

    • The Gilded Age on and Off the Board
    • Electricity, Entropy and Evolution
    • Chess, Memory, and the birth of Psychology
    • The Foundations of Mathematical Finance
    • Positional Chess; Steinitz’s scientific approach

Module 9

Jazz

  • Chess takes center stage in the Surrealist Movement
  • Frank Lloyd Wright; Space is the Breath of Art
  • Many Infinities, Incompleteness, and Quantum Mechanics
  • Orthodoxy out the window; Hypermodern opening

Module 10

A Tale of Two Bomb(e)s

    • The whole world is a Chess Board
    • Codebreaking and the Birth of the Computer
    • John Von Neumann; The Man From the Future
    • Can Chess be solved?

Module 11

Iron Curtain or Spaceship Earth

  • Fischer vs. Spasky; Proxy war across the board
  • Game Theory
  • Bounded Rationality and unbounded potential
  • How to calculate

Module 12

The Ascendency of Silicon

    • Man vs. Machine
    • Over the board and under the hood; understanding AI
    • From Harry Potter, Wu-Tang Clan, and The Queen’s Gambit
    • Simple chess programming

Module 13

The Future You Create

  • Self-directed exploration
  • 3d Printing Chess Pieces

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