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We report on our ongoing efforts to develop, implement, and test VR activities for the introductory astronomy course and laboratory. Specifically, we developed immersive activities for two challenging 3D concepts: Moon phases, and stellar parallax. For Moon phases, we built a simulation on the Universe Sandbox platform and developed a set of activities that included flying to different locations/viewpoints and moving the Moon by hand. This allowed the students to create and experience the phases and the eclipses from different vantage points, including seeing the phases of the Earth from the Moon. We tested the efficacy of these activities on a large cohort (N=116) of general education astronomy students, drawing on our experience with a previous VR Moon phase exercise (Blanco (2019)). We were able to determine that VRbased techniques perform comparably well against other teaching methods. We also worked with the studentrun VR Club at San Diego State University, using the Unity software engine to create a simulated space environment, where students could kinesthetically explore stellar parallax - both by moving themselves and by measuring parallactic motion while traveling in an orbit. The students then derived a quantitative distance estimate using the parallax angle they measured while in the virtual environment. Future plans include an immersive VR activity to demonstrate the Hubble expansion and measure the age of the Universe. These serve as examples of how one develops VR activities from the ground up, with associated pitfalls and tradeoffs.
The ground-breaking image of a black holes event horizon, which captured the publics attention and imagination in April 2019, was captured using the power of interferometry: many separate telescopes working together to observe the cosmos in incredibl
Introductory electricity and magnetism lab manual was designed to use with virtual Physics II class. The lab manual consists of experiments on electrostatics, electric potential and energy, current and resistance, DC circuits, electromagnetism, and A
A set of virtual experiments were designed to use with introductory physics I (analytical and general) class, which covers kinematics, Newton laws, energy, momentum, and rotational dynamics. Virtual experiments were based on video analysis and simula
A ball on a stick is a common and simple activity for teaching the phases of the Moon. This activity, like many others in physics and astronomy, gives students a perspective they otherwise could only imagine. For Moon phases, a third person view and
Although developing proficiency with modeling is a nationally endorsed learning outcome for upper-division undergraduate physics lab courses, no corresponding research-based assessments exist. Our longterm goal is to develop assessments of students m