AtomPlay: Design and Experimental Characterization of a Tangible Electronic Interface for Learning Electron Configuration

Electron configuration requires students to coordinate atomic number, total electron count, and the distribution of electrons among energy levels, yet most educational resources represent electrons symbolically through cards, printed boards, or digital selections. This work presents the design and experimental characterization of AtomPlay, a low-cost tangible electronic interface in which each electron is represented by a physical pushbutton and the resulting occupancy is measured electrically rather than entered as a symbolic selection. The prototype integrates 118 pushbuttons distributed across seven energy-level banks, seven resistive counting channels, a 10-bit analog-to-digital converter, and eight OLED displays controlled by a microcontroller. A transfer model for the resistive counting topology was derived and compared with bench-measured threshold intervals from occupancy states up to 32 simultaneous inputs. With the nominal resistance ratio r = 4.7, the model reproduced the measured midpoints with a mean absolute error of 5.0 ADC counts; least-squares fitting yielded an effective ratio of r = 4.83 and an RMSE of 0.74 counts. Within the calibration ranges, the observed dispersion averaged 1.97 counts and reached 4 counts in the worst case. Analysis of adjacent-count separation showed that the highest-occupancy channels approach the discrimination limit: at k = 32 the nominal design provides a conservative margin of approximately 0.9 relative to the worst-case dispersion. Maximizing the modeled adjacent-state separation yields the closed-form sizing rule r = kmax, which predicts an increase in this margin to approximately 2.0 for a 32-input channel and a practical upper bound on the order of 64 simultaneous inputs per channel for a 10-bit converter under the measured dispersion; the optimized resistance ratio was not physically tested in the present study. AtomPlay therefore contributes both an educational artifact for chemistry and a generalizable low-cost instrumentation strategy for tangible interfaces that count multiple discrete simultaneous inputs through few analog channels. Learning and affective outcomes were not evaluated in this study.

electron configuration, tangible interface, educational instrumentation, resistive sensing, microcontroller.

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