PHYAR: Introducing a Mixed/Augmented Reality Platform for Physics

Concepts

Morcos Adly, Nada Nasser and Nada Sharaf

The German University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt

Keywords:

Augmented Reality, Education, Physics, STEM.

Abstract:

Physics surrounds each one of us in their daily life. For that reason, it is crucial to teach young students the

concepts of Physics gradually starting from earlier ages. The goal of the work presented in the paper is to

design a serious game that could help young age children to understand some basics Physics concepts. The

centred goal of this paper is the design, implementation, and analysis of an AR serious game that could help

young aged students in grasping some basic Physics concepts.

1 INTRODUCTION

Innovation, today, is of a crucial role in our life. It

is viewed as a premise of development of an econ-

omy. An economy which is poor in innovation can

never develop in the future E(Raja and Nagasubra-

mani, 2018).

With the new mobile cell phones and tablets, Aug-

mented Reality (AR) is gaining more popularity. It

can actually offer a different way of seeing and un-

derstanding (Zarzuela et al., 2013). It is started to

affect various ﬁelds including training, medical imag-

ing, ... etc. With the widespread of cellphones and

their increasing capabilities, AR has also been used

for learning (Khan et al., 2019).

In addition, a lot of applications use serious

games. A lot of these applications are designed to

enhance the skills of young children. In some cases,

gamiﬁcation is also being included with the educa-

tional plan (Laine, 2018).

AR is argued to increase concentration for learn-

ing since more senses of the students are involved (Fi-

dan and Tuncel, 2019). AR innovation can be seen as

an uprade or an enchantment by learners. It mirrors

the items papers and make the clearer and more inter-

active which is appealing to learners (Sahin and Yil-

maz, 2020). Studies show that students who used AR

technology have achieved signiﬁcantly higher scores

in comparison with the ones who only followed basic

teachers’ guidance in classroom (Fidan and Tuncel,

2019; Sahin and Yilmaz, 2020; Strzys et al., 2018).

AR was used in different applications related to

Physics concepts such as the work presented in (Cai

et al., 2013)

The proposed platform PHYAR provides a game

with educational purposes. It is speciﬁcally designed

for the user to gain or strengthen his/her knowledge

about three main important Physics concepts which

are: States of Matter, Light and Gravity. PhyAR com-

bines AR and serious games to provide an attractive

and efﬁcient learning platform.

The main aim of this study is to capture the effect

of using PHYAR app on students’ academic scores in

Physics compared to their scores when only exposed

to traditional in class learning methods in School.

2 METHODOLOGY

This section includes details about the approach em-

ployed to unravel the research question.

2.1 Game Objective

PHYAR game is designed to teach youngsters ap-

proximately within ages 9-12 in primary level some

crucial physics concepts of paramount importance,

speciﬁcally three topics, which will be discussed in

the upcoming section. Its main goal not only the

teaching, but also sticking their learnt information to

their minds. That is because the most difﬁcult part is

not to instantly understand the taught concept, but is

that the memory never misses it as long as possible.

The inclusion of AR technology is the reason for

the previous discussed points. Young students got

338

Adly, M., Nasser, N. and Sharaf, N.

PHYAR: Introducing a Mixed/Augmented Reality Platform for Physics Concepts.

DOI: 10.5220/0010496103380345

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2021) - Volume 2, pages 338-345

ISBN: 978-989-758-502-9

used to reading from syllabus books and sometimes

see some illustrative ﬁgures related. However, it

could be more interesting, expressing and engaging

to view real-time animated ﬁgures and models with

interactive user-interface, which gives the user the op-

portunity to be in control of what he/she wants to ex-

perience. Moreover, with physics being the center

of the application, AR technology can be thus used

to show detailed physics concepts in terms of move-

ments, sequencing and aspect ratios in a professional

unforgettable manner.

PHYAR consists of three main scenes:

1. Matter section focuses on states transformation

(Solid, Liquid, Gas) and how these transforma-

tions affect the particles behaviour and arrange-

ment, along with illustration of the type of change

whether heating or cooling.

2. Light section consists of two main Light concepts

which are reﬂection and shdow.

3. Gravity is mainly to differentiate between the be-

haviour of free fall of any object in space against

its behaviour on earth.

The above topics were selected out of many oth-

ers related physics topics for numerous reasons. First

of all, there was a gap for the target age. The tar-

get age for users was excluding the age criteria target

for PHYAR app that ranges between 9 and 12. Sec-

ondly, Matter and Gravity topics speciﬁcally were, to

the best of our knowledge, never mentioned in any

AR app. Light topics were mentioned in (Sahin and

Yilmaz, 2020). However, it was designed for older

age group with different concepts. Thirdly, the cho-

sen topics Matter, Light and Gravity are the top of

schools’ physics curriculum for age group 9-12. Last

but not least, The above mentioned topics’ concepts

are AR-friendly in terms of explicitly unveiling every

tiny detail about the structures as well as behaviour

and reactions.

2.2 Markers

Markers for PHYAR app are unique for the speciﬁed

age group not only because they contain colorful il-

lustrating shapes, but also they contain picky bullet

points for memory located at the back of each marker.

Moreover, the chosen markers are easy to handle, re-

place and play with. That is why cards are used

as markers.Marker cards’ structure for the topics in-

cluded in PHYAR are shown in Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

and 6 below (Front and Back):

Figure 1: Solid Card.

Figure 2: Liquid Card.

Figure 3: Gas Card.

Figure 4: Shadow Card.

Figure 5: Reﬂection Card.

PHYAR: Introducing a Mixed/Augmented Reality Platform for Physics Concepts

339

Figure 6: Gravity Card.

3 PHYAR STRUCTURE

The Main Menu page contains three main buttons for

the three main topics mentioned before. In addition to

an Exit button and Sound On/Off button as shown in

Figures 7 and 8:

Figure 7: Main Menu.

Figure 8: Exit Warning.

3.1 Matter

When Matter button is clicked in the main menu,

the Matter Menu appears with those two buttons: 1-

Transformation Cycle 2- Random, as shown in Figure

3.1.1 All Transformations

This scene is reached when Transformation Cycle

button is pressed. First, the solid card must be de-

tected in order to begin the change of states journey.

The ice cube appears ﬁrst showing the atoms arrange-

ment focusing on their vibrating behaviour by a sur-

Figure 9: Matter Menu.

Figure 10: Ice Cube with its Particles.

prising mobile vibration gesture as shown in Figure

10.

A melt button of a ﬁre icon can be noticed located

at the top right. Whenever it is clicked, the ice cube

starts to melt along with the particles starting to move

faster and sliding over each other till the ice cube is

transformed to water completely. An extra icon of a

Snowﬂake appears at the top left corner which indi-

cates freezing. The ﬁre icon is also visible.however,

currently, it indicates evaporation. Giving the choice

to the user whether to freeze the water back to ice or

evaporate it as shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11: Melted Ice (Water) with its Particles.

If the Snowﬂake icon is pressed, particles start

moving slower and closer to each other forming the

ice cube once again with the mobile vibration gesture.

If the Fire icon is pressed, atoms starts to move

faster and randomly away from each other till all wa-

ter vanishes completely forming cloud as shown in

Figures 12.

Only the Snowﬂake reappears indicating conden-

sation of the vapour and once the Snowﬂake icon is

clicked, the atoms slow down and start to slide over

each other reforming water.

CSEDU 2021 - 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

340

Figure 12: Evaporating Water.

3.1.2 Random

Once the Random button is clicked the user will be

asked to detect one of the solid, liquid or gas cards.

When each card is detected separately its 3D models

appear. Figure 13 is an example when detecting the

liquid card.

Figure 13: Water (Liquid Card).

3.2 Light

As soon as Light button is chosen, the user will have

to choose which light concept to learn about Reﬂec-

tion or Shadow as shown in Figure 14.

Figure 14: Light Menu.

PHYAR app is customized for both boys and girls.

The Light section offers Reﬂection and Shadow ﬁtting

boys/girls interests. This is shown in Figure 15.

3.2.1 Reﬂection

First, the user must detect the Reﬂection card. In-

stantly, a scene consisting of Messi, Ballon D’or, mir-

ror and moon are seen, if boy is chosen. Similarly, if

Figure 15: Gender Menu.

girl is chosen, the user will see Elsa, Olaf, mirror and

moon. In both cases, the user can see a Sun icon at the

top right corner of the screen and is asked to turn on

the light, as initially the moon is up and sun is down

as shown in Figure 16.

Figure 16: Elsa after detecting Reﬂection Card if the Girl is

chosen.

Once the light is on, light rays will be seen trav-

elling from the sun to Ballon D’or/Olaf hitting the

mirror then ﬁnally reaching Messi/Elsa’s eyes. At

the same time light reaches Messi/Elsa’s eyes Bal-

lon D’or/Olaf can be seen in the mirror. Moreover,

Messi/Elsa displays a message and makes a known

character gesture indicating that they are happy and

the user can turn off the light again by ﬁnding the

moon icon as shown in Figures 17 and 18.

Figure 17: Light Rays journey to Messi’s eyes.

3.2.2 Shadow

The user must detect the Shadow card, in order to

see Ballon D’or/Olaf, white board and a light source

which is a torch. There are buttons for light intensity

control and a button to switch on/off light totally.

PHYAR: Introducing a Mixed/Augmented Reality Platform for Physics Concepts

341

Figure 18: Ballon D’or appears in the Mirror.

As long as light is not off, the user can swipe up

to move Ballon D’or/Olaf closer to the torch. Conse-

quently, the shadow size displayed on the white board

increases as shown in Figures 19.

Figure 19: Olaf is close to Torch.

Another option is that the user swipes down to

move Ballon D’or/Olaf away from the torch. In this

case, the shadow size displayed on the white board

decreases as shown in Figures 20.

Figure 20: Ballon D’or is far from Torch.

3.3 Gravity

When the Gravity button is chosen, the user is asked

to detect the gravity card. Once the gravity card is

detected a space scene appears along with an apple

and a paper kite. The paper kite and apple positions

almost stay the same and they do not fall, as Space

misses gravity. An extra button for mode switching

from Space to Earth appears at the top right corner of

the screen as shown in Figure 21.

If the earth button is pressed, grass appears instead

of space. In addition, an audio. saying Gravity on, is

played.

Figure 21: After Garvity Card detection Space appears.

Figure 22: Air Resistance On (Apple reaches the Grass

ﬁrst).

For the gravity scene, all buttons are featured with

voice-over to alert the user whether that button’s re-

lated feature is On or Off.

4 EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

This section tracks the procedure followed to exam-

ine the effect of AR serious game (PHYAR) on stu-

dents’ academic achievements compared to utilizing

traditional learning methods.

It was proven by (Repenning and Lewis, 2005)

that the learning outcome is not correlated with stu-

dents’ engagement. As a result, each of them were

tested as two independent factors.

4.1 Testing Procedure

• Primary Dependent Variable: The learning gain

of the child.

• Secondary Dependent Variable: The engage-

ment level reported during the learning process.

• Independent Variables: The only independent

variable to be observed is the method of learning,

which is AR serious game versus traditional learn-

ing.

Hypothesis: AR aided Physics learning boosts stu-

dents’ academic achievements compared to tradi-

tional learning methods.

Children were divided into two groups. The ﬁrst

group were introduced to the Physics concepts. Af-

CSEDU 2021 - 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

342

terwards, the students of this group had to answer

a test about past physics concepts they have already

learnt in school which are included in PHYAR game.

Students then experience the same content but using

PHYAR app. Finally, the students solve the same pre-

vious test.

On the other hand, the second group solved the

Physics test ﬁrst, then refreshed with the same Physics

concepts that they have already learnt before. Then,

answering same previous test again. Experiencing

PHYAR game comes next followed by last solving

phase of the same Physics test that was answered two

times before. Some ethical aspects were taken into

consideration:

• Having children’s parents or teachers permission.

• Giving a clear introduction of the study’s main

goal before the experiment.

4.2 Evaluation Material Preparing

4.2.1 Pre and Post Tests

There is no difference between the Pre and Post Tests

of Traditional Learning and AR, so that the learning

gain could be measured correctly. The test contains

eleven multiple choice questions presented in hard

copy. The questions were divided on the three top-

ics (Matter, Light, Gravity).

All the questions have multiple choices in range

four to seven choices, including options like ”All of

the above” and ”Nothing from the above”. This op-

tions make it more challenging for the students to

solve the test. These choices were added to avoid hav-

ing inaccurate data if the student chooses an answer

haphazardly.

The questions were designed to test the students’

knowledge and also were opted carefully to examine

the crucial parts that PHYAR game covers from the

three discussed physics concepts. These two tests’ re-

sults will be used to carry out the learning gain test,

which will be covered in the upcoming subsection.

4.2.2 Learning Gain Test

The Learning Gain Test is the evaluation method used

to assess youngsters’ academic levels by solving the

pre and post test of Traditional Learning method and

PHYAR game, which are exactly the same to check

the results difference for each child of his/her tests.

This difference is how the Learning gain is obtained

in order to prove/disprove the research hypothesis.

The Learning Gain of Classical Learning method

results are exactly calculated by subtracting the post

Classical Learning test from the pre Classical Learn-

ing test. Similarly, The Learning Gain of PHYAR re-

sults are calculated by subtracting the post PHYAR

test from the pre PHYAR test, which is the same re-

sult of the post Classical Learning test. For the previ-

ous calculated learning gains, if the results are posi-

tive this indicates that there is an increase in academic

scores of the child whether due to the Classical learn-

ing or AR dependably. However,if the results were

negative, this indicates that there is a decrease in the

academic level. Finally, if the learning gain of the

Classical Learning is zero then, Classical Learning

has no effect in boosting child’s academic level, and

the same for the learning gain of the AR.

Finally, the learning gain of both Classical Learn-

ing and AR are compared to notice which method has

a greater impact on youngsters academic level.

4.2.3 Engagement Test

This study is analysing the engagement level of the

child while receiving the educational content using

PHYAR serious game app. In order to achieve this

goal, a test that aims at measuring the engagement

level of the students was utilized using a Likert Scale

survey (Pearce et al., 2005).

The questionnaire is composed of 11 measured

aspects that evaluate the overall ﬂow of any activity

through assessing different major factors: control, en-

joyment, and engagement. The questionnaire was an-

swered by the children directly after completing all

the Physics topics of PHYAR game. In a nutshell, the

results of the measures included in this questionnaire

can be summed up to represent the overall engage-

ment, in control, enjoyment levels of using PHYAR

app.

4.2.4 System Usability Scale

The System Usability Scale is a basic, reliable survey

that assesses the usability of a system. It is formed of

10 Likert scale items (Brooke, 1996). This tool is very

helpful for the study as it is important to collect the

users’ feedback with respect to the usability measures

of PHYAR game. It was mainly used to assess the

usability of the AR serious game ”PHYAR”.

5 RESULTS

Most of the children realized that they chose wrong

answers while discovering each topic in PHYAR.

Others were fascinated by the idea of Elsa and Olaf

being part of the Light scene especially girls, and also

for the boys seeing Messi and the Ballon D’or.

PHYAR: Introducing a Mixed/Augmented Reality Platform for Physics Concepts

343

5.1 Learning Gain

5.1.1 Within-subject Design

The children got an average pre classical learning

test score of 3.8 out of 18 points (n=5, M=3.800,

SD=0.748), an average post classical learning test/pre

PHYAR test score of 7.8 out of 18 points (n=5,

M=7.800, SD=1.327), and an average post PHYAR

test score 17.2 out of 18 (n=5, M=17.2, SD=0.748).

This has indicated a learning gain for the classical

method by an average of 4 points (n=5, M=4.000,

SD=1.155), and a learning gain for PHYAR serious

game by an average of 9.4 points (n=5, M=9.400,

SD=0.800) . Figure 23 shows explicitly the compar-

ison between the classical learning method gain and

PHYAR gain in group one which shows the p-value

signiﬁcance (p <0.05).

Figure 23: Classical Method Gain vs PHYAR Gain (Group

One).

5.1.2 Between Group Design

The children got an average pre PHYAR test/post

classical learning test score of 9.6 out of 18 points

(n=5, M=9.600, SD=2.059), and an average post

PHYAR test score of 17.6 out of 18 points (n=5,

M=17.600, SD=0.800). This has indicated a learn-

ing gain by an average of 8 points (n=5, M=8.000,

SD=2.449).

The following ﬁgure 24 shows explicitly the com-

parison between the classical learning method gain

in group one and PHYAR gain in group two which

shows the p-value signiﬁcance (p <0.05).

Figure 24: Classical Method Gain (Group One) vs PHYAR

Gain (Group Two).

There is a signiﬁcant difference between both

tests’ outcome. It is obvious that AR aided learn-

ing has boosted children’s academic scores after using

PHYAR app.

5.2 Engagement Level Test Results

The Engagement test results were collected from each

student after experiencing PHYAR game, in order to

assess its extent for user involvement, entertainment

and engagement level while playing. The end result

was calculated by getting the average answer of all

questions of each user’s test, then averaging the pre-

vious obtained results. Finally, getting an average an-

swer for all tests which is 4.5 representing 90%.

5.3 System Usability Scale Results

The end average result obtained was approximately

94 which is obviously above the average of 68 ac-

cording to (sta, ).

6 LIMITATIONS

Some limitations were encountered while applying

the experiment. To begin with, is the small number of

participants of the tested groups. There are two main

reasons behind this. The ﬁrst reason is that COVID-

19 spread was during testing time so parents rejected

the idea of their child’s participation in the experiment

fearing from infection. The second reason is that the

Augmented Reality technology is not supported by all

mobile devices, and we were only capable of provid-

ing one device for the experiment; thus, the experi-

ments could not be conducted in parallel or not even

sent to be tested at homes and receiving survey re-

sults.

The problem of having a small sample was over-

come by using the t-tests in evaluating the learning

gain as well as the engagement levels because t-tests

are useful for analysing data of small samples. How-

ever, having a larger number of participants would

have assisted in obtaining more indicative results.

7 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

PHYAR app was implemented and tested for the

Physics topics Matter, Light and Gravity. An experi-

ment was carried out having two centered goals. The

ﬁrst objective was to obtain the learning gain of each

student and the second objective was to monitor en-

gagement levels of students while utilizing PHYAR

game. Youngsters were divided into two groups, both

were Within-Subject Design, each group contains 5

children of age between 9-12 years.

CSEDU 2021 - 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

344

To evaluate the learning gain, each of the young-

sters of the second group was given a pre test be-

fore the PHYAR experience, but after some refreshing

for the included topics that they have already learnt

traditionally in School. In addition to the post test

which was given to them after utilizing PHYAR. On

the other hand, the ﬁrst group took an extra test but be-

fore the refreshment. The Classical learning method

gain of the ﬁrst group was compared to the PHYAR

gain of the ﬁrst group and second group.

Standardised tests were used to measure usability

and engagement.

To sum up, the results revealed the signiﬁ-

cant positive impact of using PHYAR app, the AR

aided Physics learning game, on students’ academic

achievement. Consequently, PHYAR app has a no-

ticeable effect in Physics learning compared to classi-

cal learning method which could be taken advantage

of for promoting students’ academic level.

The future work could be summarized in three

main points:

1. Extending Physics Topics on PHYAR app: As

currently PHYAR app has three main topics which

are Matter, Light and Gravity, there could be a

great opportunity for more topics extension. The

extended topics could even be suitable for broader

age range with varying complexities.

2. Improving Features and Sound Effects: Some

features like the chosen models could be modiﬁed

along with the sound effects that could vary with

the current scene to be more expressible instead of

having uni-toned background music. Most impor-

tantly, we can work on increasing the engagement

level of the users, so that the application would

be more interactive; not only watching scenes but

also allowing the students to try and error to in-

crease their learning outcome.

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