Inspiration
STEM education provides the foundation of many children's interest in the STEM field, but because of lacking investments in education, poor content preparation and delivery, and the severe inaccessibility of hands-on learning, students are often subject to boring lectures can be difficult to visually follow. This inevitably leads to a declining interest in the STEM field as a whole, with less people investing their time and energy to the field.
What it does
Scaled Space helps students visualize various learning objectives using Augmented Reality to simulate the object. The sizes and distances between each planet in our solar system is a very difficult concept to grasp at a young age. As a solution, we created models of the solar system showing the relative distance and size of each planet to then simulate in real life using Augmented Reality. We similarly created biology and chemistry models, simulating the differences in sizes in organs, animals, atoms, macromolecules, and more!
How we built it
We used RealityKit, ARKit, and SceneKit to build the Augmented Reality implementation. Using Reality Composer, we were able to create the 3D simulations of what we wanted to model. We then created an iOS web application using HTML5 to allow the app to be accessible from any device without having to download an entire app.
Challenges we ran into
One of the biggest challenges was the detailed visuals that were essential to consider when creating the models. Scaling each planet, organ, animal, and molecule based on size and also considering the distance between each part of each model was important to consider, and required a lot of number crunching.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud to have implemented an accessible Augmented Reality solution in a web-based application and built an app that helps promote STEM education.
What we learned
We learned a lot about how the approach and method of learning can severely impact a student's interest in the subject. Encouraging students to continue STEM interests and careers using technology is a smart way to help students stay on track with their interests all while learning something new in a hands-on learning experience.
What's next for Scaled Space
We hope to create more subjects, fields, and models for Scaled Space. We wish to one day provide an all-in-one solution for visualizing topics in STEM education.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.