Look Inside: Understanding Thermal Flux Through Augmented Reality

The transition from high school to university is an exciting time for students including many new challenges. Particularly in the field of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the university dropout rate may reach up to 40%. The studies of physics rely on many abstract concepts and quantities that are not directly visible like energy or heat. We developed a mixed reality application for education, which augments the thermal conduction of metal by overlaying a representation of temperature as false-color visualization directly onto the object. This real-time augmentation avoids attention split and overcomes the perception gap by amplifying the human eye. Augmented and Virtual Reality environments allow students to perform experiments that were impossible to conduct for security or financial reasons. With the application, we try to foster a deeper understanding of the learning material and higher engagement during the studies.