What connects foundational experiments in the history of electricity – like those carried out by Faraday, Edison, Swan and Tesla - to contemporary experiments with smart, digital systems or low-tech renewable mini-grids?
Play ElectroTrumps and discuss.
Will you choose to explore the difference between electrical experiments, tests, trials and demonstrations? Will you choose to highlight gender disparities in the power industries and in engineering research? Will you uncover hitherto unrecognised figures? Will you demonstrate an emphasis on particular fields or reveal a funding-driven focus on particular technologies? Will you generate alternate histories of electrical technologies?
ElectroTrumps can be played with a deck of 30, 42, 48 or 52 cards. ElectroTrumps is a game for two or more players. The object of ElectroTrumps is to complete a full pack of playing cards and then to win all the cards.
A selection of 15 ElectroTrump cards can be downloaded from this website. Additional cards must be designed by the players. An ElectroTrumps playing card template can be downloaded below. In the process of inventing new cards players are invited to discuss or modify the theme, develop sub-sets, and review the categories.
To play, begin by shuffling a full deck of playing cards. Deal the cards until each player has an equal number, discarding any remaining cards. Agree who will begin, and decide the direction of play. The starting player chooses one of the categories or attributes on the cards as a trump. One at a time each player selects one card from their hand and reads out the value of that category or attribute. Whoever has the highest value in the trump category wins and collects all the other players’ cards in this round. The winning player chooses the next trump category from another card in their pile. If a player loses all their cards they are out of the game. The rounds continue until one player has collected all the cards.
Click the link below to download the rules and variations for playing the game.
Click the link below to download all 15 cards in PDF format. You can then print the PDF and cut them out (we reccomend printing onto card).
If you want to design your own card, you can download a template here (Adobe InDesign format). You will need to install the fonts used in the template (Montserrat and Roboto Condensed), which can be downloaded for free from here and here.
ElectroTrumps has been designed for use in secondary and higher education. The game aims to raise questions about the production of scientific knowledge, and the relation between science, technology and the public. Further information and ideas for teaching can be found in an accompanying paper, ‘An Energy Experiment: Tests, Trials and ElectroTrumps’.
For enquiries relating to ElectroTrumps contact
Jamie Cross (jamie.cross@ed.ac.uk)
Simone Abram (simone.abram@durham.ac.uk)
All visual material on this site has been used under the terms of Creative Commons licensing for non‑commercial re‑use.