Crash Bendicoot - An Interactive Learning Platfrm

Description

Nuclear and Particle Physics is usually taught in terms of abstract concepts in schools and universities. Some of these concepts represent the foundations of modern society and can be challenging to understand. Nowadays, visualization tools and interactive software tools offer a much more detailed and entertaining teaching experience. In particular, some of these concepts could be explained using an environment similar to a video-game that would entertain the student and be educational at the same time. For this reason, the creation of the *Crash-Bendicoot* (where Bend stands for bending magnet) platform has started. It is currently being developed using *Unity-3D*[1] and *Blender*[2], user friendly and open source software codes commonly used for videogame-development. This platform can give a chance to students to learn a scientific topic interactively, enjoying the experience in the meanwhile. It can import real engineering or physics models (thanks also to the *Pyg4ometry*[3] tool) and output realistic data giving the chance of an authentic "working" experience for students. The advantage of such a platform is that can be easily distributed to students all over the world in a software format, making science truly open and accessible. At the moment a full particle transport beam-line model has been imported in *Unity-3D*, and it was proved that particle collisions and interactions can be simulated in such a game-like environment[4]. The basic idea of this hackathon project is to develop a platform that gives first insight into accelerator physics. Therefore, we plan to show the behavior of simple beam line elements like dipoles, quadrupoles and collimators so that people with no prior knowledge of accelerator physics can experience the basic working principles of a beam line or how a beam line works. We imported a real CERN-beam line (K12) in *Unity-3D* consisting of a particle source, magnetic components and collimators. There are as well a target and detection system connected to the line. The user can navigate along the beam line and can experience the effect of the different elements on the particle trajectories. There are also different options implemented to tune the strength of the magnets to optimize the particle transmission to the target and detector. Regarding its applications, this game will be useful for High-School and Undergraduate students to get a first virtual experience on how an actual beam line looks like and how it works. Additionally the platform can be used in public events for outreach in order to get more people in our society interested in science concepts.

Technologies used

Blender, Unity3D, Pyg4ometry

Obstacles

We learned game development in Unity3D from scratch. That's why it took quite long in the beginning to get to basic concepts in development.

Accomplishments

We have a running interactive version of the game to see really the behavior of the beam line elements. We were finally able to have the Blender-Model of Crash walking along the beam line and modifying the strengths of the magnets.

Learnings

Game development is a powerful tool to teach physics to the outside of science.

Next steps

We will "complete" the game by introducing more physics concepts to make the simulation even more realistic, for example by a particle shower as soon as a particle hits a beam line element. We will use game development, especially our game, to teach physics to other fields to make online learning more entertaining.