Communications of the ACM
Students se Sandbox to Demonstrate Gravity
Undergraduate students in the University of Iowa's Department of Physics and Astronomy designed and built a sandbox where users can see how gravity affects an object as it travels through an imagined environment.
Credit: Tim Schoon
Researchers at the University of Iowa (UI) have developed Gravbox, an augmented reality (AR) sandbox to help explain how gravity affects objects when they travel through a certain environment.
They say Gravbox is created with the sand, and then a computer program projects a particle moving through that environment to show gravity's effects.
The UI team based Gravbox on the University of California, Davis' AR sandbox that simulates water flow in an environment.
"Essentially, we want all of this to be open source, so anyone can go to our website, download it, look at the hardware, the specifications they need, then they can go and try to build their own," says UI's Mason Reed. He notes Gravbox makes demonstrations of gravity less tedious and more interesting to see.
The researchers want to use these features at local schools and children's museums to help young people understand gravity in a more hands-on way.
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