Periodic table in augmented reality
1. Introduction
An impressive periodic table in augmented reality that allows students including high school and college to review and interact with the world of 3D neutrons and electrons in the 21st century.
The application can control and manipulate 3D objects rather than doing a real chemical reaction which can be a dangerous or limited experiment. The application can help students get excited when learning chemistry and get access to unlimited resources in the chemical world not only from the laboratory but also from the real world.
Below are the two videos that demonstrate the progress of the development.
2. Description of the application
2.1. The purpose of the app
This application aims to enable students over the age of 12 with a basic understanding of chemistry to learn the periodic table more effectively and engagingly. Learning the periodic table by using the conventional method requires students to memorize a large amount of complex information without actively engaging with the subject. However, according to Bloom's taxonomy, memory is at the lowest level of cognition and is quickly forgotten after classes. Students will take more of an interest in learning about the periodic table if they are permitted to participate in this app as an educational game during class activities. (Franco-Mariscal, Martinez, and Almoraima, 2015).
2.2. The significance of your application in the context of your chosen scenario
The focus of this application will be on creating intuitive and useful interfaces for students. Each atom's chemical information will be presented using this application. Students can readily understand an atom by viewing not only its position on the periodic table, but also its source in nature or its function, etc., as well as a 3D representation that includes electrons, protons, and neutrons.
Chemical reactions are available for user interaction. By arranging components side by side, the application enables users to select components and generate chemical equations in a unique and entertaining manner. The outcomes of those creations can illustrate which chemical elements are able to interact with each other.
3. Description of the interaction solution
Different data is superimposed over the physical environment using augmented reality (AR). Augmented reality is a technology that enhances a user's view of the actual world by superimposing digital information on top of it. The most notable advantage of augmented reality is the seamless integration of digital and three-dimensional (3D) elements with one's perspective of the actual environment.
In light of recent advances and the widespread availability of computing technologies, 3D visualization in AR has the potential to be applied in chemistry education (Kim et al. 2007) and, more specifically, to improve students’ understanding of periodic tables. With the traditional method, studying chemistry is very challenging because the students must have a strong grasp of the mathematical and physical laws to understand concepts of chemical bonding (Abdinejad et al. 2020). There is widespread agreement among high school students about chemical bonding, with just 50% displaying a misunderstanding (Fadillah & Salirawati, 2018). AR, a method that superimposes virtual things on actual photographs, is very useful for chemistry students since it aids the visualization of materials that are not intuitively comprehendible (Wu et al. 2013) and improves students’3D-visualization as well as their spatial cognition capabilities (Martín-Gutiérrez et al. 2010). Moreover, using a 3D image in school has been shown to be more efficient at assisting students to understand complex topics than using static images and text documents in textbooks (Eze 2015).
Moreover, there are numerous substantial advantages of bringing AR to the laboratory setting. Traditional laboratory experiments pose a danger to students (Silva et al. 2019). Acids from leaking chemical tanks or those produced by the testing itself might result in the release of poisonous fumes or even an explosion throughout the course of the testing process. As a result, educators need to step in and assist students to work through these issues because they are beyond their control. With AR, however, they can conduct our tests in a fully risk-free setting environment because all experiments from the application's system and experiment results are also visible.
4. Interaction design
4.1. Interacting with the 3D neutron and electrons in the virtual world by selecting the picture of a chemical element in the periodic table to view its configuration.
According to Saidin (2019), active and meaningful learning are believed to occur when learners are involved in the process of selecting images and words, such as selecting the picture of a chemical element in the period table, following integrating them to utilize the prior knowledge that the users possess. Moreover, Mayer (1999) introduced a theory-based design principle of how to maximize constructivist learning from multimedia learning by minimizing the cognitive load, for instance, projecting the 3D model of electrons together with the words to describe the configuration of the electrons without extraneous words as described in Figure 1.
In addition, the Von Restorff effect (the isolation effect) stated that the memory would process better for the standout items when multiple items are presented (Von 1993). This design principle is inclined to signaling and redundancy principles which were introduced by Mayer (1999). By highlighting the electron with different colors to make it isolated from other electrons and visual screen-text in three-dimensional virtual content to the student’s brain so that learners could acquire knowledge and understand through the process of reflection and active construction like a reflection of atomic mass and chemical symbol among chemical elements
Finally, text-to-speech recognition is adopted in the system to read atom configuration to students. Even though voice quality has no effect on the learning outcomes, it can impact trust which is perceived as the virtual human qualities of facilitating learning, credibility, and engagement (Chiou 2020). As the result, students will be likely to engage proactively in learning the periodic table.
Figure 1 -The implementation of the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning on designing the periodic table in AR (Saidin, 2019)
4.2. Presenting interactive native chemistry by moving the atoms close to each other to form a new compound
Garnett & Hackling (1995) believed that chemic can be studied at three different levels, where the symbolic level is the highest level in which students would learn about the formulae and equations, for example, H2O is made up of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. At this level, some students may find difficulties with the interactive nature of chemical reactions because the reaction is not tangible and visible, hence students might have the misconception that the water molecule consists of another molecule (H2) instead of two hydrogen atoms.
After taking into consideration of challenges and difficulties to explain the compound process of chemic, Wu & Shah (2014) suggested a strong principle for designing and developing chemical Bonds by viewing chemical reactions through visualization and animation. The visual symbolic representations and animation would help students to understand a chemical process better such as dissolving salt in water.
It is therefore, it is essential to incorporate formulae and equations as part of the required feature of learning the periodic table.
4.3. Extracting atomic components of a molecule by scanning its physical object
VR technology can recognize a physical object in the real environment by real-time scanning of the environment, for example, real-time object and lane detection are incorporated into self-driving vehicles to avoid collision (Ghasemi et al. 2022). By leveraging this concept in the design, when scanning a physical object (water), the AR system extracts the atomic components of the water molecule and presents one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms in 3D models. As the result, the students could understand completely the structure of water molecules. After having done some research regarding this interaction design, it proves that it is possible to implement this feature in an AR project however for this project, it would be considered as future development and will be included in this assignment.
Below is the storyboard to illustrate the use case of the interface design.
5. Initial technical development
The Vuforia and Unity development environments were used to create the app. Vuforia is a software development kit that allows for the monitoring of physical markers in real-time using a mobile device's camera, which renders 3D models of things on the screen while taking their orientation and location into consideration. All of the essential interface code was developed in C#.
6. Initial of 3D Models
7. Conclusion
| Thumbnail image | Image name | Purpose of usage |
 | Hydrogen model | Hydrogen model control and use a lot in chemical reaction. |
 | Oxygen model | Oxygen model can be connected with Hydrogen and create water. |
 | Water drop model | Water drop model shows the result of the chemical reaction between Hydrogen and Oxygen. |
 | Periodic table | Periodic table is used as a tool to recognize elements. |
AR applications can alleviate typical issues in the chemistry learning process, such as lack of student involvement and accidents during laboratory experiments. 3D representations of chemical components will aid students in remembering this knowledge for longer, and the use of 3D visuals in the classroom will be more successful in aiding students in grasping complex topics. Moreover, this application would enable students to do risk-free experiments.
8. References
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