Simulating Educational Physical Experiments in Augmented Reality

Abstract

Figure 1: Left: An experiment simulating the motion of a car crankshaft. Right: A centrifugal regulator in PhysicsPlayground. We present an augmented reality application for mechanics edu-cation. It utilizes a recent physics engine developed for the PC gaming market to simulate physical experiments in the domain of mechanics in real time. Students are enabled to actively build own experiments and study them in a three-dimensional virtual world. A variety of tools are provided to analyze forces, mass, paths and other properties of objects before, during and after experiments. In-novative teaching content is presented that exploits the strengths of our immersive virtual environment. PhysicsPlayground serves as an example of how current technologies can be combined to deliver a new quality in physics education