Whenever Fairfax County, Virginia, eighth grader Kasra Karimi played a board game as a child, he always considered ways to make it more fun.
During the pandemic, when his classes were online and he was bored at home, he considered other unique forms of entertainment. He was still in elementary school at the time, and there were boxes from Costco and Amazon orders lying around. They provided the inspiration for what Karimi described as a series of minigames he crafted for himself, just for fun.
In one case, he grabbed a pingpong ball and Ferrero Rocher chocolate box, and created a math game. He explained the rules to his dad, and the pair discussed ways to improve it.
Years later, Karimi, now a student at Thoreau Middle School, has received a patent for the game, hoping it helps make math enjoyable for students who may dread the subject.
“The whole point of this game is to educate and incorporate math and a game into one,” Karimi said.
It does that using a series of inserts Karimi created. Players throw the ball into one of the chocolate box’s slots, which have numbers and equations. They range from simple addition and subtraction to figures as complex as square roots. Each one either increases or decreases a participant’s point total, and there are various ways to win, all based on points.
“This can be played from a spectrum from preschoolers to college to precalculus,” Karimi said.
He fine-tuned the game with his dad, Pegeman Karimi, who played for about two hours the first time he learned about the idea.
“It was so much fun,” Pegeman Karimi said. “You had to do all this addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, all those math equations that you have to do.”
Pegeman Karimi works for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and he and his son sat down to write what he thought the game is. They conducted searches about similar products that may already exist. They crafted a patent application, hired a lawyer to review it and learned there was an expedited process for first-time filers.
“We took advantage of that one, as soon as we filed our patent, within about three weeks, it was assigned to an examiner and within about two-and-a-half months, three months, Kasra received a patent,” Pegeman Karimi said.
The game has evolved, and now includes both the physical variation and an app version. Beyond making math fun, Kasra is hoping his work encourages other students to patent their own ideas.
“A lot of kids have ideas, but someone needs to pay attention to them and make sure these ideas become patents,” Pegeman Karimi said. “Probably at some point, they become toys or something manufactured.”
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
漏 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
