This Zelda fan is using Tears of the Kingdom to teach real-life engineering students at a university

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

(Image credit: Nintendo)

A Zelda fan - and university professor - is using Tears of the Kingdom to teach undergraduate engineering students in the US.

Professor Ryan Sochol, of the University of Maryland, has recently launched a new class appropriately called 'The Legend of Zelda: A Link to Machine Design.' In the class, students will use Tears of the Kingdom's building mechanics and Link's new Ultrahand ability to advance their knowledge of machine design and engineering.

In a video that explains the new course, professor Sochol says following Tears of the Kingdom's release in May 2023: "I felt like we had this unique opportunity to help students advance their understanding and knowledge of machine design and engineering." The professor continues: "What surprised me, as I was playing through the game, was the unexpected emphasis on machine design and engineering."

As Tears of the Kingdom players will already know, the game features many types of machine elements, including rockets, wheels, propellers, springs, and more. "What's interesting is that each of these machine elements uses energy differently," the professor explains. "In engineering fields, we use computer-aided design or 'CAD software' to design everything from vehicles to robots, to everyday mechanical parts." According to Sochol, the Zelda title "actually includes its own CAD interface," although a rather simplistic one compared to the real thing.

The professor then goes on to state how sophisticated the physics are in Tears of the Kingdom, going as far as revealing: "In engineering fields, we might spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to license sophisticated software to model these kinds of physics - but with a Nintendo Switch, and the video game, we're able to replicate very similar."

So what do the students taking the class do? As the video also explains, students enrolled in the course are split into teams and then each group is given a Nintendo Switch, the game, and a Pro Controller. From here, the students are able to take these things home for the duration of the semester and will work together to complete the assignment.

As for the assignment, students will need to learn the basics of the different machine elements, investigate certain elements, and finally take part in a Machine Design challenge. Here, the groups will need to come up with a "transforming, bioinspired, amphibious" robot vehicle which will then race against the other groups in the class to earn part of their grade. What a cool idea for a class.

Unsurprisingly, the HyruleEngineering subreddit (which is home to tons of in-game creations from Tears of the Kingdom) actually helped Sochol get the class off the ground. "I genuinely believe this community played a large part in helping me make a case to the 'higher-ups'," the professor said in an AMA over on the subreddit. To do this, Sochol said they showed the higher-ups "so many" of the builds and investigations members of the subreddit were doing.

Find out what you could be building with our best Zelda Tears of the Kingdom vehicles guide.

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.