Moving from classroom to escape room

Abstract

Five students hunched over a classroom table, their huddled heads eclipsing a lone beaker filled with blue liquid. Around them, desks lay sideways and flipped upside down. Time was running out. They had been locked inside the room and were absorbed in figuring out their escape, which they knew had to involve that blue beaker. Sounds stressful, but the students had volunteered. They had an hour to solve a series of puzzles using chemistry experiments as part of a trial of an educational activity for high school students at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Dato’ Jaafar in Johor, Malaysia. The game was inspired by escape rooms, the popular recreational activity that has captivated puzzle enthusiasts worldwide in the past several years. In escape rooms, players scour special rooms for clues to free themselves by solving math or other logic-based riddles. They also have to avoid red herrings designed to throw them off