The beauty of 'Minecraft' is it's not language-based

"The beauty of 'Minecraft' is it's not language-based," said Lorraine Yurshansky, executive producer for the new Google Creative Lab. "Over half the traffic is international. It's a global game, which makes it a global reach."Yurshansky tapped Michalakis to develop a fun and engaging way to get kids interested in quantum mechanics as part of the Google Creative Lab's STEM initiative.In the beginning, Michalakis didn't know "Minecraft" from "Minesweeper," he said. He originally pitched that the educational game center around either the Super Mario Bros. or Zelda franchises, but Yurshansky suggested "Minecraft" was more topical, and the game's cubicle world would be more conducive to teach quantum mechanics.

"You need to strike a balance between being fun and inspiring," Yurshansky said. "You want them to go down the rabbit hole. You want them to be excited about physics."Chatwin-Davis and Kubica both were more familiar with "Minecraft," and consulted on "qCraft.""We had some suggestions in how it should behave so that you enjoying playing this mod,Because you would have an economy but at the same time, you can learn a bit of quantum mechanics," Kubica said.Schools across the U.S., including New Los Angeles Charter School, have built lesson plans around "Minecraft." The sandbox game can act as a history lesson, a math lesson or even a science lesson."Since it's a building game, you can build anything you want," said Joel Levin, cofounder and education director of MinecraftEdu, headquartered in Finland. "Teachers can and do use the Minecraft world to teach whatever they want."

"QCraft" was a hit when Michalakis, Kubica and fellow Caltech consultant Aidan Chatwin-Davis presented it at the popular MineCon convention on Nov. 2 and 3 in Orlando, Fla."It was pretty intense," Chatwin-Davis said. "There was a continuous stream of kids and adults. I'd say what was really cool was getting just as many questions from the kids as the adults."Taxation, representation and slavery were up for debate recently at Wauwatosa West High School, where juniors engaged in a multi-day, in-class simulation of the first Constitutional Convention in 1787."I hope that today's debate ends with a decision on how representatives are chosen," Andrew Gleason typed on Twitter.