The Reactor

See what your students get, and why it lands.

No mockups. Every page below is real, pulled straight from the files you download. Tap any one to see it full size.

A worksheet was never going to teach this.

On the Alpha Call, your students are not answering questions about reaction rates. They are running Meridian Chemical Works, and a batch is drifting out of spec. The temptation is to hunt for a dramatic cause like sabotage. The data points somewhere duller: a corroding fitting. Each student reads only their slice of the plant, reactor temperature, purity, emissions logs, or budget, then has to commit to a posture and name the metric that would prove them wrong. They are making a real call from incomplete evidence, with money and a client contract on the line. The chemistry is the costume. The reasoning is the course. By the time they defend the boring fix to their team, they have done the work no problem set asks for.

Tap to see a decision day

They are graded on their reasoning, not on getting it right.

A student who replaces the corroding fitting, names the falling iron trace as the signal to watch, and holds steady while purity dips has earned full marks, even if the dashboard stays red for two more days. A student who panics, reverses the fix, and happens to land a clean number has not. The dual rubric scores each daily journal entry on a 5, 3, 1, 0 scale for the quality of the reasoning, then pairs that with a holistic read of the whole journal. This is how you separate a calculated risk from luck: a named signal, a written falsification condition, and the patience to hold through the lag. Grading runs to roughly thirty seconds per student because the rubric tells you exactly what a sound process looks like.

Tap to read the grading rubric

Let the workbook hold the busywork.

Each student owns one role, Synthesis Lead, QC Analyst, Safety and Compliance Officer, or Operations Manager, and the tech-enabled workbook holds that role's data so nobody is recopying tables by hand. It logs reactor temperatures and catalyst ratios, purity and contaminant readings, emissions and near-miss records, or budget and inventory, depending on the seat. On critical days it prompts each student to write their independent posture and falsification condition before the group talks, so the loudest voice does not set the answer. The slow pump drift that starts on Day 2 sits quietly in the numbers, in spec for nine days, waiting for someone to notice the trend. The workbook does the arithmetic. Your students spend their energy on the judgment.

Tap to see the tracker

Every day is already scripted.

The teacher guide runs each session on a clear cycle: diagnose where the team is, set up the day's decision, let students reason, then debrief. Scripted teaching points land on five specific days, 0, 3, 5, 9, and 14, so the cognitive architecture becomes visible at the right moments without you having to invent them. The simulation is day-indexed, not clock-indexed, so you can compress the building days or stretch the 14-day arc to fit a block schedule or a packed calendar without losing the cascade. You bring the facilitation and the questions. The simulation brings the case, the data, the postures, and the answer key for what sound reasoning looks like. Prep stays light because the day is already written.

Tap to read the teacher guide

The lesson plan is already written.

Every simulation comes with a fully editable, admin-ready lesson plan. Standards alignment, daily pacing, learning objectives, differentiation, and an assessment plan are already done, so you can hand it to an administrator or adapt it to your district template in minutes.

Tap to preview the lesson plan

The day the dashboard turns red and the right call is to do nothing new.

It is Day 6 at Meridian Chemical Works. Yesterday your QC Analyst convinced the team to replace a corroding fitting on the alpha line, the boring fix, over the dramatic theory that someone had contaminated the feedstock. The fix was sound. So why is purity still below spec this morning? The dashboard is redder than it was before they touched anything. The Operations Manager wants to reverse the change and chase a new cause. The whole team feels the pull. They made the careful choice and the numbers got worse, and every instinct says the careful choice was wrong.

Here is the pivot. One student scrolls past the angry purity line to the contaminant trace and sees the iron reading falling, slowly, steadily, day over day. That is the planted tell. The chemistry is settling exactly the way a real fix settles, with a lag. The choice is between protecting their pride by reversing course and trusting the one quiet signal that says hold. The team that holds watches purity climb back on Day 8. The team that panics restarts the whole problem. Once they have seen it, they never trust a single red number again.

Meridian Chemical Works, four roles, one plant, incomplete information.

Your students run a working chemical plant across a 14-day operational arc. The plant produces against client specs while costs, emissions, and equipment all pull in different directions. Each student takes one specialized role, Synthesis Lead, QC Analyst, Safety and Compliance Officer, or Operations Manager, and no single role sees the whole picture. To survive an out-of-spec batch, an EPA inspection, and a creeping pump failure, they have to read across each other and reason together while still standing on their own data.

Engineering better thinkers.

Discernment matters here because the plant data is noisy, partial, and split across four roles, so the easy read is almost always wrong. Each day pairs a named bias with the capacity that defeats it, made concrete through the chemistry students are running.

14 days of evidence under pressure.

Day 0 sets the plant, the roles, and the rules of evidence. From there the case builds: a quiet pump drift starts early and hides in spec for nine days, the alpha line forces a binding call, a recovery lag tests nerve, and a final inspection asks whether each team can tell a calculated risk from luck.

Standards alignment.

The Reactor maps to the Next Generation Science Standards and HS-PS physical science practices, with the chemistry serving as a genuine context rather than a backdrop. Students plan and carry out investigations and analyze and interpret data (SEP practices) as they read purity, contaminant, and reactor readings against client specs, touching HS-PS1 chemical reactions content through reaction conditions, catalysts, and contamination. The simulation lives most fully in the Nature of Science strand, specifically that scientific knowledge is open to revision in light of new evidence, since teams must revise their causal models as fresh plant data releases. It also models scientific inquiry as a human, collaborative endeavor under real pressure.

Turnkey, classroom-ready.