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Better Together
Project UP (Understandable Physics)
Summary
Project UP is a web application that allows the audience to experience advanced topics in physics and further enhance their understanding of said topics through analogies accompanied by visual graphics, and interactive interfaces thus removing the hassle of stressing their brains out. It allows users to appreciate and take in the beauty of Physics without being intimidated by the gravity of the topics. The project brings up the excitement for learning and allows people of any background to appreciate and, perhaps, even understand concepts in advanced Physics.
How We Addressed This Challenge
The team recognized an inherent inequality among Filipino students when it comes to education. In fact, current literature shows that the pursuance of higher education is skewed towards people who are already academically gifted to begin with or people who have the fiscal means to demand for it [1]. Thus, Project UP aims to cultivate within every user an appreciation and perhaps even an understanding of advanced concepts, thus also cultivating an appreciation for higher education.
Project UP presents a series of advanced physics lessons through analogies and laymanized explanations with the aim of making people, especially the youth, more easily appreciate physics, and help them reach at least a baseline understanding of these concepts.
Through this solution, we have provided methods to do the following:
- Make Advanced Physics more approachable for those who are intimidated by it.
- Make the method of teaching engaging enough to keep people interested in learning, but not make it too simple and focused on engagement so as to not take away from the richness of the topics.
- Make concepts be more easily understood even by students who have limited knowledge in these advanced concepts.
- Make the knowledge gap less apparent between the youth who are fortunate enough to be given opportunities to receive an education in advanced physics, and those who weren’t as fortunate.
How We Developed This Project
This project was developed as a web application. We wanted to make sure that our solution would be easily accessible for the general public with the help of the commonly used internet. We also wanted to make sure that we will explain the concepts in such a way that students from Grade 7 up can understand.
As individuals who were lucky enough to be part of the specialized education system we were made aware of the inequality based on personal anecdotes from close relatives and family members who were not fortunate enough to partake in the same specialized system as us. This was also supported by supplementary literature which give the same conclusions.
Thus, we made use of the knowledge we gained from our specialized courses and made it so that the less fortunate people will be able to understand a few of the many topics under Advanced Physics.
Once we have instilled an appreciation and big-picture understanding for the topics, we then made use of NASA data and resources to give the user specific data, information, and theory on the topic. With the big-picture understanding developed by our interface and analogies, and the specificity given by the NASA data, we would have then developed sufficient understanding for the user. This user would then get an idea on what higher physics really is, thus he/she could pursue this if he/she is inclined to do so.
Feel free to visit our site: https://marssongco.github.io/
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
Once we have instilled an appreciation and big-picture understanding for the topics, we then made use of NASA data and resources to give the user specific data, information, and theory on the topic. For example, we used NASA GRACE Gravity data to show how gravity varies in our quantum mechanics lesson. Additionally, we used NASA Image library images as part of graphics, and serve as references for our artworks. We also used NASA resources and articles as reference for our topic discussions.
Project Demo
Project UP Features: https://1drv.ms/p/s!Au_7E2PesCtfkCNVv8lPgiRxuBW5?e=LkKDCk
Data & Resources
Data on Educational Inequality
[1] “Measuring Educational Inequality in the Philippines”, Eirene P. Mesa (School of Economics, University of the Philippines Diliman), https://ideas.repec.org/p/phs/dpaper/200704.html#:~:text=This%20paper%20measures%20the%20degree%20of%20education%20inequality%20in%20the%20Philippines.&text=Using%20decomposition%20analysis%2C%20it%20finds,distribution%20of%20education%20than%20males.
[2] “Skilled Labour Migration from the Philippines” https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---migrant/documents/publication/wcms_201780.pdf
General Relativity (NASA Data)
[3] “100 Years of General Relativity” https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/11/25/100-years-of-general-relativity/#:~:text=At%20its%20most%20basic%2C%20general,cause%20space%2Dtime%20to%20stretch.
[4]”Testing General Relativity” https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/testing-general-relativity
[5] “Einstein's General Relativity Theory Upheld” https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6026
Quantum Particles and Gravitation (NASA Data)
[6] Gravity Map from NASA GRACE Satellites https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/11234
[7] “The Observer in Modern Physics” https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/observer.htm
Black Holes (NASA Data)
[8] Chandra X-Ray Observatory M87 Imaging https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/black-hole-image-makes-history
[9] “What are Black Holes?” https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/black_hole_description.html