In The Flow: An Immersive Experience Illustrating How Fluid Dynamics Connects Us Globally and Impacts Our Climate*

Many fluids and physics related laboratory facilities are inaccessible to the general public. The limitations on physical access to the locations where cutting edge research is conducted can limit exposure of the next generation to potential career opportunities and may contribute to a lack of understanding of the global impacts of this research. To bring fluids research to a broader community, we take climate related work conducted at the University of New Hampshire Flow Physics Facility and present it to middle school and high school students in two formats: an in-person tour and a virtual tour using NASA Infiniscope’s Tour It platform.

Both the in-person and virtual tour cover the same material, which aligns with the next generation science standards for monitoring and minimizing human impact on the environment. This NASA SCoPE seed grant project provided funds to collaborate with a professional artist who installed interactive displays in a wind tunnel to truly showcase how art and science can work together to help understand human-environment interconnectivity. During both the online interaction and in-person tours, pre-tour and post-tour surveys were conducted to evaluate how much visitors learned and the effectiveness of in-person versus virtual communication of information. During this presentation, the results of our comparison showing that the virtual tour is as effective, if not more, than an in-person tour will be shown and our best practices will be reviewed.