Using Smartphone Sensors for Virtual Labs during COVID-19 era
Abstract
With the spread of COVID 19 around the world, students and faculty were forced to move to virtual learning. This especially impacted "hands-on" laboratory science courses. By using sensors embedded into smartphones, our team designed experiments for first year college students that could be done from their homes or dorms with their smartphones in order to teach physics concepts virtually. Specifically we developed a series of activities to explore acceleration due to gravity using an accelerometer via two different methods. The students were first asked to design a setup in which they could drop their phones a distance of 1 meter to take some measurements, analyze the data, and plot their results. Then, we asked them to try and calculate g again by turning their smartphones into pendulums. An analysis was done on the students' understanding of how a pendulum can be used to calculate g before and after they were asked to carry out the experiment in order to test the effectiveness of the lab. Then they were asked to think about any differences between their results for g from individual trials and from the two different methods to explore errors and uncertainties that arise when conducting experiments. They conducted experiments independently and as part of small groups to help each other with any technical issues or physics understanding, compare results and have an expanded set of data.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMED0370010R
- Keywords:
-
- 0810 Post-secondary education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0855 Diversity;
- EDUCATION