Computer-games for gravitational wave science outreach: Black Hole Pong and Space Time Quest
L. Carbone, C. Bond, D. Brown, F. Brueckner, K. Grover, D. Lodhia, C. M. F. Mingarelli, P. Fulda, R. J. E. Smith, R. Unwin, A. Vecchio, M. Wang, L. Whalley, A. Freise
CComputer-games for gravitational wave scienceoutreach:
Black Hole Pong and
Space Time Quest
L. Carbone, C. Bond, D. Brown, F. Br¨uckner, K. Grover, D. Lodhia,C.M.F. Mingarelli, P. Fulda, R.J.E. Smith, R. Unwin, A. Vecchio,M. Wang, L. Whalley and A. Freise
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of BirminghamEdgbaston - Birmingham, B15 2TT, United KingdomE-mail: [email protected]
Abstract.
We have established a program aimed at developing computer applications and webapplets to be used for educational purposes as well as gravitational wave outreach activities.These applications and applets teach gravitational wave physics and technology. The computerprograms are generated in collaboration with undergraduates and summer students as partof our teaching activities, and are freely distributed on a dedicated website. As part of thisprogram, we have developed two computer-games related to gravitational wave science: ‘BlackHole Pong’ and ‘Space Time Quest’. In this article we present an overview of our computerrelated outreach activities and discuss the games and their educational aspects, and report onsome positive feedback received.
To be published on:
Journal of Physics: Conference Series , Proceedings of the 9 th AmaldiConference on Gravitational Waves, Cardiff 2011
1. Introduction
The next generation of gravitational wave (GW) detectors - most notably Advanced LIGO [1],GEO-HF [2] and Advanced VIRGO [3] - are expected to achieve the first direct detection ofGWs during 2015, when Advanced LIGO begins operation or soon thereafter, giving life to thenew field of the GW astronomy. The impact on cosmology, fundamental physics, and of courseon conventional astronomy itself will be enormous; the interest in GW observation is thereforegrowing rapidly in the scientific community. But while the public interest in cosmology andrelativity is high, public knowledge of the principles behind GW detection is still rather limited,and even the existence of the large GW observatories is little known by the more general public,compared to larger experimental facilities such as, for instance, the Large Hadron Collider [4].There is a clear need to better inform and inspire the general public and prospective studentsin GW astronomy and related sciences. Within the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) the‘Education and Public Outreach’ (EPO) group aims to combine ideas and approaches across thecollaboration to successfully communicate the vision and benefits of GW observation throughoutthe world.To contribute to these international efforts in the promotion of GW astronomy, at theUniversity of Birmingham we have established a unique program aimed to the development ofsmall educational computer applications that can be used to illustrate the basics of GW scienceand GW detector technology in a playful but informative way. The aim is to present GW a r X i v : . [ phy s i c s . e d - ph ] M a r cience to younger generations within one of the environments they are more familiar with, i.e.computer-games, and to exploit the communication channels that the new technologies offer topossibly get an even larger international audience in contact with GW science.This activity led us to the successful development of a number of interactive computer appletsdescribing a variety of concepts connected to GW science and, eventually, to the realisation of twofull-scale computer-games based on the subjects of gravity and GWs. In this article we overviewour computer related outreach activity and present and discuss our GW related games, BlackHole Pong and Space Time Quest.
2. ‘Processing’ programs for science outreach
The idea of developing small computer applications for educational purposes builds upon theneed to introduce new students to the world of computer programming and modelling of physicalsystems in a manner which is enjoyable. This will not only help them learn successfully, butalso engages them with GW research. During the initial ‘induction’ phase, undergraduate orsummer-students involved in research projects with our group are encouraged to generate a smallcomputer program on a GW subject of their interest, which is then developed, as a conventionalstudent-project, by the student with the supervision of more senior members of the group.The small computer programs, called ‘sketches’, are developed using the open-sourceprogramming environment Processing [5, 6], originally developed at the MIT Media Lab in 2001as a software prototyping environment and to teach fundamentals of computer programmingwithin a graphical context. Processing has eventually reached a wide audience and is nowlargely used in many professional communities, such as designers, artists, and architects to creategraphical applications, animations, interactive tools and for visual arts in general. Processingoffers an intuitive approach to programming for the beginner or an efficient sketchbookfor rapid prototyping by experienced programmers. Thus Processing allows students withvery different computing-backgrounds to collaborate and to successfully produce graphicallyimpressive sketches in a relatively short period of time.The successful sketches are published online on our outreach website gwoptics.org [7], onindividual webpages where the student-author can provide instructions and a short descriptionof the physics illustrated in the sketch. The program is either embedded within the HTML codeto run as an applet in the webpage itself or, where more appropriate, distributed for downloadas an application to install and run on the computer of the interested person.The collection of sketches developed so far covers a wide spectrum of subjects related toGW science and technologies. The programs range from illustrating the most fundamentalproperties of GWs, for example the deformation of space-time produced by a propagating GW orthe characteristic ‘sound’ of the GW signal of colliding black holes, to the illustration of the vitaltechnologies and phenomena used in GW detectors such as lasers, vibration isolation systemsor interference of light. Different combinations of these sketches have been successfully usedas interactive tools during seminars about GW detection and during more general lectures inschools and universities, and the sketches webpages are regularly consulted online by peopleinterested in learning about the specific subject.
3. The gravitational wave games
The positive feedback we received about the different interactive sketches has encouraged usto realise two properly defined computer-games based on subjects related to gravity and GWscience. The motivation behind the development of the two particular games was as follows:in one case, the aim was to produce an intuitive and graphically attractive computer-gamethat could engage and entertain children and teenagers during science exhibitions; in the other,the goal was vice-versa to develop an interactive element that could function as an engagingand playful supplement for illustrating and explaining the secrets of GW detectors and their igure 1.
Screen-shots of the Black Hole Pong game. The image on the left shows thestart-up screen of the game and the right snapshot has been taken mid-game, showing one ofthe astronomical background images, the two ‘black holes’ controlled by the players and severalbright disks as the stars currently in play.technology to a more educated audience, such as high-school students onwards. The two games,Black Hole Pong and Space Time Quest, are presented and discussed in this section.
Black Hole Pong (BHP) is a new arcade-style game with a reference to one of the very firstcomputer-games,
Pong [8]. Pong involved two players, each one controlling a paddle which theywould move vertically up and down in order to bounce a ball back towards their opponent: eachtime the ball touched the opponent’s far edge of the screen, the player would score a point. InBHP the idea of the split-screen has been kept. However each player controls a black hole whichcan move horizontally as well as vertically, and the objective is to make use of the gravitationalpotential of the black hole to fling free roaming stars towards the other player.BHP has been designed as a simple, fun game for people of all ages. At the same time,BHP features several educational elements that make it a fascinating tool for teaching, learningand discovering new physical concepts. For example, by learning how to manoeuvre theincoming stars only using the black hole’s gravitational potential, the player develops an intuitive
Figure 2.
Children, students and adults enjoying the BHP game at the University ofBirmingham Community Day 2011 (left), the British Science Festival 2010 (center) and the9 th Amaldi Conference (right). igure 3.
Screenshots of STQ. On the left, the ‘PI’s office’ is the game’s hub from which theplayer can access all the detector’s subsystems. On the right an image of the ‘Optics’ subsystemscreen.understanding of concepts such as gravitational attraction, orbital mechanics and gravitationalslingshot effect. The background graphics of the game is a slideshow containing images ofthe night sky as well as astronomical objects taken by both amateur astronomers and largeground/space based telescopes. Furthermore, several astrophysical phenomena are graphicallyfeatured in the game, such as ‘worm holes’, ‘star capture’ and ‘gravitational lensing’, addingto the overall simple but attractive graphics, see Fig. 1. When used as part of an exhibition,science fair or similar activity we have supported the arcade-style attraction by state-of-the arthardware: the game is designed to be controlled with the well-known Microsoft Xbox controllersand whenever possible we use large Apple iMac computers to run the game, as shown in Fig. 2.
Space Time Quest (STQ), here shown with screenshots in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, is a manager-simulation type game: the player is the ‘Principal Investigator’ (PI) of a future ground-basedGW interferometer who has the goal to design the most sensitive GW detector. The PI isassigned a limited budget that he has to wisely distribute between the different detector’ssubsystems to tweak the instrument parameters and to achieve the best sensitivity. Once theplayer is satisfied with their design, they can operate the detector in ‘Science-Run’ mode andsee how well it performs: the final score is determined by how far in the universe the detectoritself can explore, based on the achieved sensitivity curve, and it is recorded in the web-basedSTQ ‘hall-of-fame’.STQ is complemented by the ‘Gravitational Waves E-Book’ [9], effectively a collection ofwebpages with short introductions to a number of topics relevant to GW science. The E-Bookoffers a description of the main instrument subsystems that comprise the detector and illustrateshow each noise source relates to the different subsystem parameters that the player chooses. TheE-Book text is purposely aimed to the general person who has interested in GW science, andas such it is written with a simple style to make it accessible to a broad public of all agesand backgrounds. The E-Book is also independently available online as more general readingmaterial on GW science, and is now also offered in multiple languages.STQ contains many educational merits for the public. First of all, the game showcases thephysics behind a real GW detector and it presents all the main subsystems that comprise it.Furthermore, it illustrates all the most important noise sources which can limit the detector’ssensitivity. By reading the E-Book and by looking at the changes in the sensitivity curve,the player can see how each subsystem is affected by the different noise sources, and discover igure 4.
Left: a screen-shot of the ‘sensitivity curve’ in the STQ game. Right: schoolstudents playing STQ with a demonstrator during an exhibition at University of Birmingham.some of the ways in which physicists try to reduce the noise sources in the detector. Thegame also presents some of the typical challenges that physicists face when designing a realphysics experiment, such as making trade-offs between performances of different interlinkedsubsystem parameters and managing the available resources wisely. Finally, STQ features imagesof astronomical objects in the background, similar to BHP. Furthermore the STQ graphicsare based on photographs of components from real GW detectors complemented with realisticcartoons of the detector parts, offering a realistic picture of how a GW interferometer looks liketo the user.STQ is mainly targeted for science teachers, A-level, Higher and Advanced Higher sciencestudents and is mainly suited for use in science fairs and exhibitions and initially played withthe help of demonstrators. However, STQ has also proved to be an entertaining tool to teach thebasics of GW science also to beginners in GW research-projects and PhD schools, or to attractprospective research students towards the GW field.
4. Use in exhibitions and distribution
Early prototypes of the games have been used for the first time during the exhibition aboutGW science ‘Looking for Black Holes with Lasers’, organised by the Birmingham GW Groupwithin the ‘British Science Festival’, held in Birmingham in September 2010 [11]. The verypositive feedback collected with the games during this first exhibition gained us the attention ofour university and of local schools and associations. This led to our displays being routinely usedin University Open/Admission days and in our university’s outreach events, e.g. the University t o t a l v i e w s BHPSTQAR pend
Figure 5.
Total number of unique views of the online video tutorials for the Black Hole Pongand Space Time Quest games and for one of our processing sketches, the ‘Augmented RealityPendulum’. Data from youtube.com. an Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug SepJan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep D o w n l oad s BHPSTQ C u m u l a t i v e nu m be r o f v i s i t s ProcessingBHPSTQSTQ high scoreE − bookAR pendInspiral signal Figure 6.
Top panel: number of download of the Black Hole Pong and Space Time Questgames over the year 2011. Bottom panel, cumulative number of visits during 2011 to some ofthe gwoptics.org outreach pages, such as the main page collecting all Processing programs, thegames BHP and STQ, the STQ high-score ‘hall of fame’, the E-Book and the pages of two otherProcessing sketches, the ‘Augmented Reality Pendulum’ and the ‘Inspiral signal’.Community Day 2011 [12], and gained members of our group invitations to visit schools andgive public seminars, where the games were used to complement the seminar. At the same time,positive feedback has been received from school teachers concerning our other Processing sketcheswhich have been used as support material in physics lectures and during science activities.Since their official release, BHP and STQ are freely distributed on our websitegwoptics.org and on the outreach pages of the ligo.org website [13], which hosts links andmultimedia material of interest for the EPO group. The launch of the two games was alsoannounced online via social-media networks and with online videos, with the main aim of raisingboth the profile of the games and its visibility. Indicative figures of merit on how positive thiscampaign has been can be inferred from the total number of download of the two games, theentries in the high score ‘hall of fame’, the unique views of the online video-tutorials, and moregenerally from the number of visits to the webpages presenting our online material. Examplesof such data are presented in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6. The response is so far very positive and seem toindicate a slow but constant growth of new contacts and an increasing interest in the productsthemselves. In particular, sensible increments in the number of contacts can be successfullycorrelated with our contribution at science events and exhibitions, with release of new outreachmaterial and with our communication campaign via online social networks.STQ and BHP are also accompanied by short questionnaires, handed-out at exhibitions andduring visits to schools as well as online, which are distributed to collect anonymous feedbackamongst the users, targeting in particular teacher’s and student’s categories. The aim of thequestionnaires is primarily to evaluate the success of the games among the users and in particularabout the effectiveness of their educational aspects. As a further step in the future, the goalis to develop a proper analysis of the feedback provided in the questionnaires that will allowus to better link the games to specific elements of education, such as formal education, and toimprove their integration within the syllabus. . Conclusion and future activities
Our program aimed at the development of small computer applications for educational purposes.This has been successful, with the realisation of several interactive sketches and two full scalegames related to GW science and technology. Thanks to our participation at popular scienceevents, and to our online presence and communication campaign, the sketches and the gamesare now becoming popular within schools and science associations and, as shown by the responsegathered from the online audience, the prospective feedback looks promising for the future. Inparticular, BHP and STQ have allowed us to significantly increase the visibility of our onlinepresence and as such also of GW science within the general public, as well as within the localscientific community.Encouraged by these positive results, we will continue our computer related outreach activityin the next years, and we plan to realise new Processing sketches for outreach in the near future.In parallel, BHP and STQ will be treated as running projects. We will take advantage of thefeedback and advice from teachers, students and other users to make further modifications andimprovements to both games. Furthermore, we will continue presenting BHP, STQ and ourother interactive sketches during visits to local schools and in popular science events. We hopeto increase and improve our online communication campaign on GW subjects to make GWdetectors more and more popular among the general public and to gain GW science the largestaudience possible.
Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to the Processing community for all the online examples, code libraries andonline forums that helped us in the development of our sketches and games and without whommost of this work would not have been possible. We thank the astronomers who allowed us touse their impressive photographs of the night sky as background images for the BHP and STQgames (see the credits page in the games for the details) and we are thankful to the GEO600collaboration, for providing images of components of the detector used in the STQ game andfor extensive beta-testing of the initial game prototype. This document has been assigned theLIGO Laboratory document number ligo-p1100145.
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Processing: a programming handbook for visual designers and artists (MIT Press Ltd,Boston, MA - USA , 2007), ISBN 10: 0262182629[6] [7] [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong and [9] [10] [11] [12] [13][13]