Visuo-Haptic Simulations to Understand the Dependence of Electric Forces on Distance

Abstract

In this paper, the potential of visuo-haptic simulators to help engineering students to understand the nature of electric forces between different electric charge distributions is addressed. Three visuo-haptic simulators were designed to perceive the attractive–repulsive behavior as well as the dependence on distance of electrical forces for: (a) point charge, (b) line charge, and (c) plane charge. Design elements were incorporated to improve the 3D perception of the simulators. A sample of N = 111 engineering students practiced with the simulators: 87 enrolled in an Electricity and Magnetism course and 24 enrolled in a more advanced Electromagnetic Fields course. Pre-test and Post-test were applied before and after working with the simulators and average learning gains were obtained. t-tests were performed to determine the statistical significance of the results. Significant learning gains were obtained for the comprehension of the force dependence in the case of line charge and plane charge, but not for the point charge, due to the fact that most students started with very high Pre-test scores in this last case. These results suggest that the use of visuo-haptic simulators may help students to better identify the dependence of electric forces on distance. It was also observed that the potential effect of improving the recognition of electric interactions was higher among students with lower previous familiarity with these topics, as compared to more advanced students. Through exit surveys, it was found that the students liked very much the haptic activity and that it sparked their interest in learning new physical concepts.

VIS-HAPT: A Methodology Proposal to Develop Visuo-Haptic Environments in Education 4.0

“…There are several examples in the literature about the design, implementation, and evaluation of the impact of using visuo-haptic environments with educational purposes, such as frictional forces [21][22][23], the Coriolis effect [8], precession [23], fluids concepts [7], chemical bonding [24], and electric forces [6,25,26]. These studies suggest that embodied learning significantly contributes to a better understanding of abstract concepts dealing with forces.…”

“…After developing several visuo-haptic simulators for the teaching of physics in OpenGL and Unity environments [6,22,[28][29][30], the main contribution of this work is the identification of a methodology to facilitate the conceptualization, design, implementation, and evaluation of visuo-haptic environments aiming to foster the understanding and applications of physics and science concepts by engineering students in order to develop skills within the framework of Education 4.0.…”

“…In a recent work, Neri et al (2020) [6] presented a new version of the visuo-haptic simulators for the electric forces of the preliminary work by [28], which included the new architecture and the HaDIU plugin proposed by [9]. Moreover, several design elements were incorporated to improve the 3D perception of the simulators.…”

“…Embodied cognition theory is based on the paradigm of adding senses, enhancing the learning experience, and enabling the student to acquire knowledge at a more profound and longer-term level [4][5][6]. Haptic feedback (from the Greek haptesthai, meaning "contact" or "touch"), incorporates the tactile sense in a virtual world, which is the most sophisticated of all our senses, allowing the users to perceive different sensations such as pressure, texture, hardness, weight, and the form of virtual objects in a visuo-haptic simulator [7].…”

“…Haptic feedback (from the Greek haptesthai, meaning "contact" or "touch"), incorporates the tactile sense in a virtual world, which is the most sophisticated of all our senses, allowing the users to perceive different sensations such as pressure, texture, hardness, weight, and the form of virtual objects in a visuo-haptic simulator [7]. In this sense, the use of visuo-haptic environments, in which haptic technology is combined with virtual learning environments (e.g., [6]), allows the student's brain to receive stimuli from different channels, thus enhancing a better acquisition of concepts during the learning process [8], and promoting the development of critical competencies that will prepare them to more efficiently respond in future scenarios.…”