Designing And Realization Of Simulation Experiments For Middle-school Physics Based On Virtual Reality Technology

Physics is an important subject of natural science for middle school students, itis now playing a crucial role in building students’ spirit of science as well as theability of exploring. Physics itself comes so close with our natural world, and inorder to probe into it, experiments are always necessary. It can be said that if partingfrom experiments, physics will definitely lose its foundation.Nevertheless, with the present situation concerned, still many problems can befound while setting or implementing physics experiments at lots of middle schools.Firstly, courses of experiment cover a small proportion of the whole curriculum, andthey are sparsely arranged; Secondly, experimental instruments and apparatusesusually cost quite a lot, for a majority of middle schools it may cause great fundpressure. Thirdly, it may demotivate some students for being too far away toexplicitly observe experimental phenomena while the teacher is demonstrating;Lastly, a part of schools just have the students do the very experiments related toexams. Instead of carrying out experiments in laboratories, many teachers justlecture them to students in class, as theories. This is totally contrary to the originalintention of experimental courses setting. In addition, there are several experimentsthat have their own defects such as fast phenomena, irreversible process, havingdifficulty to observe minutely, needing special conditions, bearing dangerous orrisky elements.Considering the situation mentioned, it is necessary to develop simulationexperiments for middle-school physics using the virtual reality technology, in orderto overcome some shortages existing in nowadays physics experiments in middleschools. This kind of experiments is able to make students explore and learn on theirown. Students can start the experiments wherever or whenever they feel like to. Bydoing this, students’ desire of exploring and the initiative to learn would be thenaroused. This system allows basic intercommunication and control via net so thatteachers and students can use it to interact with each other. As it infers, theweb-supported collaborative learning pattern is thereby available.In addition, students can utilize this system as a preview coming before the realexperimental activities, like getting to grasp relevant experimental tips andknowledges as well as constructing a brief cognitive sense concerned. After the real experiments, students may also use the system to review the content of what theyhad gone through.With simulation, virtual reality and correlative theories concerned, this paperelaborates how the virtual simulation experiments are conceived, designed and thenimplemented. At the end of this paper a conclusion of this research is drawn.Sincerely hope that this research might help add a tiny brick to the construction oftoday’s middle-school physics experimental activities.