Learning about the scale of the solar system using digital planetarium visualizations

Ka Chun Yu,Kamran Sahami,James Dove

doi:10.1119/1.4984812

Abstract

We studied the use of a digital planetarium for teaching relative distances and sizes in introductory undergraduate astronomy classes. Inspired in part by the classic short film The Powers of Ten and large physical scale models of the Solar System that can be explored on foot, we created lectures using virtual versions of these two pedagogical approaches for classes that saw either an immersive treatment in the planetarium or a non-immersive version in the regular classroom (with N = 973 students participating in total). Students who visited the planetarium had not only the greatest learning gains, but their performance increased with time, whereas students who saw the same visuals projected onto a flat display in their classroom showed less retention over time. The gains seen in the students who visited the planetarium reveal that this medium is a powerful tool for visualizing scale over multiple orders of magnitude. However the modest gains for the students in the regular classroom also show the utility of these visualization approaches for the broader category of classroom physics simulations.

Highlights

We studied the use of a digital planetarium for teaching relative distances and sizes in introductory undergraduate astronomy classes
Inspired in part by the classic short film The Powers of Ten and large physical scale models of the Solar System that can be explored on foot, we created lectures using virtual versions of these two pedagogical approaches for classes that saw either an immersive treatment in the planetarium or a non-immersive version in the regular classroom
One of the primary goals for “Astro 101” courses—the introductory astronomy classes that appeal to undergraduate nonscience majors—is to give students a “cosmic perspective—a broad understanding of the nature, scope, and evolution of the Universe, and where the Earth and Solar System fit in.”1 This includes grasping the immensity of the universe, including the quantities used to measure scale like the Astronomical Unit for the Solar System and parsecs for interstellar distances (Ref. 1, p. 58)

Summary

Introduction

One of the primary goals for “Astro 101” courses—the introductory astronomy classes that appeal to undergraduate nonscience majors—is to give students a “cosmic perspective—a broad understanding of the nature, scope, and evolution of the Universe, and where the Earth and Solar System fit in.” This includes grasping the immensity of the universe, including the quantities used to measure scale like the Astronomical Unit for the Solar System and parsecs for interstellar distances (Ref. 1, p. 58). One of the primary goals for “Astro 101” courses—the introductory astronomy classes that appeal to undergraduate nonscience majors—is to give students a “cosmic perspective—a broad understanding of the nature, scope, and evolution of the Universe, and where the Earth and Solar System fit in.” This includes grasping the immensity of the universe, including the quantities used to measure scale like the Astronomical Unit for the Solar System and parsecs for interstellar distances It is one of the concepts that “unifies science disciplines and provide[s] students with powerful ideas to help them understand the natural world.” Familiarity with scale can lead to awareness of how varying measures like length, velocity, mass, and temperature are associated with different physical phenomena at different scales (Ref. 2, Ch. 15) such as the role of quantum mechanics at atomic scales, special relativistic effects for velocities near the speed of light, and the domain of superconductivity at low temperatures. Scales and distances in astronomy are difficult to teach because the quantities are typically far greater than what people can intuitively comprehend. When probed to gauge their intuitive understanding of astronomical distances, students ranging from junior high to college tended to underestimate Sun-Earth and Sun-to-nearest star distances, with the amount of underestimation increasing for more distant objects like stars and galaxies. Erroneous conceptions about astronomical scale have been found to be resistant to change even after a semester-long undergraduate astronomy class, which suggest that students hold alternative conceptions prior to their classroom introduction to the topic

Methods

Results

Conclusion