What is learned from the IceCube Virtual Reality Game a case study with Thai students

Abstract

Discover IceCube is a virtual reality (VR) experience developed by an interdisciplinary team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It allows the user to travel to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole and take a fanciful flight to a black hole that produced the detected neutrino. It provides an engaging activity to learn about IceCube, neutrinos, multimessenger astrophysics, and extreme sources. The prebuilt Discover IceCube virtual experience was translated into Thai as means of broadening the audience for this work. To test the impact of this modified experience, students were given a pre-test and post-test. The data showed that the experience provided a means to increase students’ understanding of concepts such as neutrinos, physics, and IceCube. Furthermore, the VR experience also demonstrated an increased Thai students’ interest in physics and science.