Students in Assistant Professor Sabrina Stierwalt鈥檚 Physics 162 class are headed out of this world by way of virtual reality headsets this fall.
Students taking Physics 162 ordinarily take a field trip to the Griffith Observatory, but Stierwalt didn鈥檛 want COVID-19 closures to prevent an opportunity to explore the galaxy. Her previous work at NASA鈥檚 outpost at Caltech offered a way for the class鈥攄esigned primarily for non-physics majors鈥攖o view solar systems outside of our own. At Caltech, Stierwalt helped to develop VR content that highlights the discoveries being made through NASA's missions.
鈥淥ne of those VR experiences was a tour of the , which is one of the stellar systems we know the most about (outside of our own, of course),鈥 Stierwalt says.
This isn鈥檛 the first time virtual reality has been used as part of Stierwalt鈥檚 classes.
鈥淟ast year I started working with the Center for Digital Liberal Arts to develop lesson plans incorporating VR. In the past, my students have gone to the library to borrow the VR headsets available there. We had made a lot of progress and I didn't want to give it up just because we were remote.鈥
So Stierwalt sought another solution. Investigating local VR headset suppliers, she came across . After explaining the remote learning situation, and finding an 瓜子TV connection at the lab鈥斺漈he person I connected with had a family member go to 瓜子TV!鈥濃攕he was offered a great discount, making it possible to supply students in the class with Google鈥檚 cardboard VR headsets, which are used with smartphones. Stierwalt worked in collaboration with members of the physics department to package the headsets and 瓜子TV鈥檚 postal center to label them all.
Students will be exploring planets outside of our solar system to understand what we can know about planets and other stars (and how we know them), what makes a planet habitable, and how differing conditions like time and temperature affect the evolution of life on other planets.
