Teaching Using Immersion - Explaining Magnetism and Eclipses in a Planetarium Dome

Previously we have shown that three-dimensional concepts are more readily learned in a three-dimensional context. Although VR headsets are growing in popularity, they only provide a quite limited field of view, and each person in a group may be viewing a different direction or a different time in the visualization. By using instead a fullsphere movie (VR360) in a planetarium dome instead of a headset, you can share the VR and specify which half of the sphere your audience is looking at. You can pause the movie, ask questions using a clicker system, display the results, and move on if the subject is mastered or explain if items are not understood. In this paper we have used a planetarium dome in its more traditional "hemisphere" mode to teach about magnetism (using our new show "Magnetism - Defending Our Planet, Defining the Cosmos" ) and pre/post testing to show how many concepts can be understood in a relatively short experience. We have identified 35 concepts that most high school students do NOT know about magnetism, and have done pre/post testing on students and teachers. Most students more than doubled the number of concepts that they were able to explain after watching the show just one time. We have also created a series of eclipse animations to teach about solar and lunar eclipses. These animations have been used in more than 500 planetarium theaters and used as part of several TV specials on the August 2017 eclipse. By teaching eclipses in a dome, the students correctly understand the three-dimensional geometry of the Earth and Moon orbits and the causes of eclipses.