As I go through my sophomore year of high school, I keep thinking of ways that I could use Unity with school. The only thing I have actually used it for in school so far was an English project. We were allowed to come up with our own projects for Animal Farm by George Orwell. I made a quick 3d model of the farm and major characters. You can view it here if you want.
Most of my ideas are with biology. I thought of making a “game” where you manipulate cells and whatever. Although it would be hard to make this a fun game, it might have use as an educational tool.
Recently I thought of using it to make a hypothetical new species with a number of traits. You could then create as many of these animals as you want, give them certain genotypes, and then set parameters for them to reproduce. You could set certain traits to decrease that animal’s chance of reproducing and see how many generations it would take for the trait to likely die out.
Or you could apply Unity in chemistry to experiment with making compounds.
I just see lots of potential for Unity as an educational tool.
What do you think?
Most certainly.
Educational games usually seem to be of the “Answer 5+6 and kill the monster or open the secret door” ilk, but Unity is a perfect tool to take it to the next level.
I’ve seen a sperm game, molecular visualization tool and even a few solar system simulations made with Unity. I haven’t yet seen any genetic algorithms mixed with a neural net as suggested by your last idea. That is a hot field these days though.
I think the most interesting ones are the videos where a set of creatures evolve to learn how to walk. The creatures, being nothing more than fashioned out of a random assortment of primitives.
I worked on a project a while back with a professor at the Karolinska University Hospital. He was a part of the microbiology team and wanted to create an interactive 3d scene of their latest research on the inner workings of the pancreatic beta cell. The project was being done in another software package, and unfortunately never got completed. I’ve been temped to get back in touch with him and try again with Unity though. I think Unity would work perfectly for a simulation like that.
Anyway, I know there are a lot of scientists, researchers, and educators interested in utilizing interactive media for simulations and education. That is actually where I plan to focus my efforts. Games that have some kind of real world educational or productivity value. I think Unity is a perfect tool for this. 
Quietus - can you remember where you came across the sperm game? I run a site that’s heavily based on human reproduction - might be nice to hook up with the author if the games interesting enough.
Ooh collaboration!
Thumbs up, AbsoluteBreeze
Well, I’m about to embark on a genetics simulation.