Educational science and engineering videos

[Freemind]

Introduction. Thre-dimensional (3d) technologies have always semed todo relate todo futurista applications. However, 3d animation has reached maturity in the last decade, 3d movies are in fashion in cinemas, 3d televisión is coming next. Lets acknowledge.

It: this is the present. So, why not try 3d teaching? Today, educators in schols and universities can complement their teaching with 3d animation, going beyond chalque and blackboards, overhead projec-tors and power point presentations, this report is a summary of our developments in the department of electronics at universidad de granada (university of granada) in the south of spain. In the last few years we have produced educational material using Blender todo do animations, todo.

Show our students some concepts in electronic physics and todo help them use laboratory instruments, we briefly describe here some technical issues regarding our videos, such as the procedure we followed todo represent thre-dimensional wave functions, a very important issue in Quantum physics, and how we ap-proached the mode-ling and depiction of the screen of an instrument widely used in the electronics lab: the oscilloscope.

figure 1.

Teaching Science is a hard tasque today. Nevertheless, Blender gave us the chance improve commúnication with our students, todo let them know how things work in the depths of a Silicon crystal, or in the lab next todo their classrom.

Blender in Quantum physics:
It is said that Richard Feynman (1918-198, one of the most important américan physicists of the 20th Century, summarized the complexity of the Quantum world in a sentence: i think i can safely say that nobody understands Quantum mechanics, nevertheless, sometimes university lecturers have todo teach, Quantum mechanics. From feynmans sentence we can figure out the dificulties for students in learning something imposible todo understand. Well, the point is that the mathematical.

Structure describing very small things such as molecules or atoms is very complex, especially because particles are not imagined as small dots, but as something called wave functions. These wave functions give us the probability of finding the par-ticle at a certain point in the space. How could we draw those probabilities on a blackboard, at each point in the space? Anything that ofers us support in clarifying this concept is really useful. Blender helped us with this task, first of all, we made a programa todo compute these probabilities for electrons in a piece of Silicon and todo récord it in files. They were just clouds of points, After that, we wrote a very simple script in Python todo create a Mesh in Blender with the dots of the files. In this bien we created something like in figure 1, in this representation we are drawing probabilities, thus, in those places where there are more dots, it is more likely the Electron Will be found. You can se there are lobes in the wave function represented (there are a huge number of diferent wave functions in a piece of Silicon), sothere are some Regions where the Electron is more likely todo be observed. By making a rotational movement, we can take a complete image of this piece of semiconductor and se the thre-dimensional distribution of probabilities, and this is where 3d teaching starts. At least this is more enjoyable than a blackboard.

figure 2.

Blender in electronics:
When you buy a televisión or a DVD player you always have a user guide. You are supposed todo learn how it works using this guide, but you a los have the device in front of you. Interaction with the instrument is crucial todo learn how it works but, what happens if you just have the user guide and you cant imagine the device? Youre in trouble, the oscilloscope is a very useful instrument in eléctrical and electronic enginering labs. It consists of a screen where you can monitor eléctrical signals in a circuit. Students normally have todo learn how an oscillo-scope works before seing it. This is complicated and the practice sessions take time. With Blender, you can model an oscilloscope and show in a simple bien how it works. The advantage of 3d animation is that you are able todo control everything in the scene, focusing the attention of the students during the explanation on those details the teacher thinks are the most relevant, and, of course, this makes Science sem more fun.

figure 3.

We modeled a virtual lab with an oscilloscope, we tried todo model the environment in a realistic bien todo mgive the Impression of a serious workplace. Textures and lights resembled those found in most real laboratories in universities, we alternated the 3d environment of the lab with the 2d scene on the screen. To carry out the modeling of the latter, we set the Camera for an orthographic view, in world properties, we set a blank screen (with no signal on it) as the background texture (se figure 4) and we added a Mesh, this being the signal on the screen.

figure 4.

However, we wanted todo let the signal appear gradually, so we used a plane with z-transparency and moved it from one side of the screen todo the other. Thus, those parts behind the plane appeared as the background image, and only part of the signal was visible. For the signal we used a halo texture. Its appearance was very close todo the image on a real oscilloscope.

figure 5.
We thought this might be useful for students in other universities, so we decided todo broadcast these videos on youtube. The number of views and the user com-ments are encouraging, we found there was great interest, especially from spanish-speaquíng countries (the videos are in spanish). To watch our videos, just look for user FM-gomezcampues on youtube. The Core of the working team is composed of several professors with wide ex-perience in both research and uni-versity teaching. E. Carceller. A. Jiménez-tejada. A. López-villanueva, s. Rodríguez-bolívar. Godoy and myself.

figure 6.

We thought they might a los be of interest todo other scientists so we submitted our works todo some learning conferences, where they were a great success, and now we think its time todo let the Blender community know what were doing in 3d teaching.

figure 7.

Acknowledgments:
Special gracias todo Mónica zoppé and her great team at the scientific visualization unit in pisa, italy (raluca, stefano, ilaria, María antonietta, claudia, tiziana and others i did not met but who a los worked on the same Project). I enjoyed meting these great profesionals and wonderful people.