Ed Center on CSE continues to

Engage People In Cyberinfrastructure - 31May06

 

 

The Education Center on Computational Science & Engineering (ECCSE) has promoted the use of high performance computing and its support systems for over eight years at San Diego State University.  The ECCSE was originally formed in 1997 as a partnership activity with the San Diego Supercomputer Center’s National Partnership for Advanced Computational Science Infrastructure (NPACI) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).  When NPACI ended in 2004, we seized on the opportunity for a new partner with Boston University and its efforts in visualization to support science education and received NSF funding as part of the Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure (EPIC) grant, which is one of the first funded projects from the NSF Office of CyberInfrastructure (OCI) [http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0520146]

 

For our participation, we proposed researching how to use the current game engines as a platform to develop education modules to support high school science instruction.  We established a collaboration with two sciences teachers from Hoover High School, a part of the SDSU Education Collaboratory.  Mr. Robert North teaches chemistry and Mr. Hal Cox teaches physics.  Both teachers were asked to identify a concept from their curriculum, along with its corresponding California State Standard, that they felt would be aided by a three dimensional, computer generated interaction module.  We also explored the wide world of computer game engines and chose the Torque Game Engine (TGE) from GarageGames.com based on its broad user community, its effectiveness as a development platform on the personal computer and its attractive cost of $100 for an Independent Developer License.  An additional assess was our partnership with the Visualization Team at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, who have used the Torque Game Engine to develop their own modules to explore science.

 

Our development team at SDSU included a professor of computer science, Kris Stewart, a staff resources specialist, Kirsten Barber, and two computer science majors as programmers, John Nguyen and Skylar Hayes.  Our first project was to visualize a simple molecule to demonstrate the power of the nuclear force.  This is a required topic from the California State Chemistry Standard 11.a Nuclear Processes

  1. Nuclear processes are those in which an atomic nucleus changes, including radioactive decay of naturally occurring and human-made isotopes, nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion. As a basis for understanding this concept:
    1. Students know protons and neutrons in the nucleus are held together by nuclear forces that overcome the electromagnetic repulsion between the protons. [http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/scchemistry.asp]

 

After preliminary meetings with Mr. North to come to understand what he felt would be useful for his students, our student programmers began developing a module for a “Virtual Field Trip to the Lithium Battery”.  After several iterations with Mr. North, the computer model was refined.  The Ed Center team accompanied Mr. North when he presented information on the partnership we had formed in the August 2005 Chemistry Teacher In-Service workshop for San Diego City Schools. 

 

Latest in the Fall Semester, Mr. North used this module in the computer labs at Hoover High school for his students to learn about the nuclear force.

 

We then began working with Mr. Hal Cox to find an appropriate 3d model to support concepts his students had difficulty with in their physics courses.  The required topic that Mr. Cox selected was 5n: Electric and Magnetic Phenomena

  1. Electric and magnetic phenomena are related and have many practical applications. As a basis for understanding this concept: n Students know the magnitude of the force on a moving particle (with charge q) in a magnetic field is qvB sin(a), where a is the angle between v and B (v and B are the magnitudes of vectors v and B, respectively), and students use the right-hand rule to find the direction of this force.

[http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/scphysics.asp]

Our preliminary modules are available for download to a IBM PC computing platform as a zip-file from

Virtual Field Trip to Lithium Battery

http://visservices.sdsc.edu/projects/explore/LitBattery.php

 

Hosted by the Visualization Services Group at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

 

Our preliminary module on Exploring the effect of Magnetic Fields on Projectile Motion is available from

http://edcenter2.sdsu.edu/PhysicsGame.zip

To ensure continued development with the Game Engines, Dr. Stewart taught an upper division Computer Science Elective in Spring 2006 on 3d Game Programming for Simulation.  This was well received by students from both computer science and from graphics arts at SDSU.  It will be repeated in Spring 2007.

Kris Stewart, Professor, Computer Science, GMCS 535

Director, Ed Center on Computational Science & Engineering, LA073