Learn the Prime Numbers the Fun Way on Your iOS Device

I don't often write about games because, after all, this is Practical iStuff.  However, learning is always a practical thing and there are a lot of games out there that are designed to educate you rather than simply provide you with the satisfaction of knocking off a few green pigs with some angry avians.  (You could make the argument that Angry Birds teaches you physics but that might be a stretch.)

Not all of the education games out there are both worthwhile and well-designed. However, I caught a an app called Factor Samurai for the iPhone and iPad on sale for free and decided to try it.  It's clearly patterned after Fruit Ninja in the sense that you are slicing things with a sword but it's rather well done.

The difference between Factor Samurai and Fruit Ninja is that instead of various forms of fruit to slice up, you have numbers, some of which are prime numbers.  The trick is that you want to slice the non-prime numbers.  When you do, you'll end up with two more numbers. If any of them is not a prime number, you can slice it again before it falls off the bottom of the screen. You have three swords to start with and every time you slice a prime number, you lose a sword. Lose all three swords and the game is over. You get points for each non-prime number you slice and lose points for non-prime numbers that fall off the screen without you slicing them.

This is a great game to put on your kid's iPod Touch. There are other good educational games out there too that you may also want to put on a child's iOS device (or your own).  I'll talk about other good ones as I discover them because, after all, learning is practical.