Virtual Reality Simulations for Solid State Physics Education

Solid-state physics is considered hard to grasp since it requires a strong background in math and quantum mechanics. Even with a solid knowledge of math and quantum mechanics, it is still challenging to visualize the three dimensional and even complicated two-dimensional structures. In the meantime, the spatial visualization of crystals is critical to understand the symmetries of a physical system.
We have utilized virtual reality simulations to improve the students' spatial visualization ability and help them to have a more interactive learning experience in a solid-state physics context. In this talk, I will present on the details of how virtual reality simulations are used as a virtual lab [1] to build different types of crystals and associate the lattice structure with the physical properties such as magnetic and electronic properties of solids.

[1] R. B. Loftin, M. Engleberg and R. Benedetti, "Applying virtual reality in education: A prototypical virtual physics laboratory," Proceedings of 1993 IEEE Research Properties in Virtual Reality Symposium, San Jose, CA, USA, 1993, pp. 67-74.