Learning Chemistry Can Be a Lot of Fun
Last summer, five science enthusiasts discovered there was chemistry between them in a week-long prototyping camp called Hüppelaud (Springboard) and decided to build a new chemistry learning tool: VReaction.
The project lead, Magnus Tohver, tells the story how they came up with the idea and how they built it:
VReaction is an interactive virtual reality (VR) chemistry learning platform with a focus on hands on and practical learning through experimentation. VReaction offers the possibility to handle dangerous acids and flammable compounds and do dangerous experiments… in the safe environment of virtual reality. It is practical science education with the only borders being one’s imagination and the laws of nature.
Our team consists of five members: Magnus Tohver (project lead), Markus Trasberg (wildcard), Grete Paat (chief designer), Kaarel Katmuk (tester and developer), and Kaur Reidma (lead programmer). We like to joke that we have two “offices” as half our team lives in Tallinn and the other half in Tartu. Although we met for the first time in Tallinn at the 2018 Hüppelaud event, we all felt like long time friends. This is what made our work on VReaction possible, the great communication and teamwork made up for our inexperience in developing for VR.
When we created the vision for VReaction, we wanted our platform to stay fun and practical but at the same time educational. We want it to have a common and real use in science learning, so it must have a good educational base from which much can be learned. Yet there is a fine line between being educational and being boring, and it is difficult to find the right balance. We hope to achieve this balance by giving enough freedom for exploration (and throwing chairs around the laboratory) while directing the user towards a certain goal.
Virtual reality allows the user to experience everything in three dimensions and move like they were in a real laboratory. This allows us to give a more holistic experience as they must use their hand motions to pour liquids together or measure out substances. This way we can supplement a laboratory experience with a virtual one which feels just like the real thing.
When we first started development of VReaction, we thought that developing for VR is super hard. In reality, it is really simple to do. We used the Unreal game engine which has a graphic programming interface which allows us to just drag and drop boxes to write our code. There are also many freeware premade templates for actions such as teleporting or grabbing which made our prototyping easier, as the majority of the coding had already been done for us. Developing for VR is easier than ever before.
We have kept working on VReaction even after everyone returned to school after summer although it is difficult to balance school and developing VReaction. This means that it is hard to make fast and significant progress with development. We have luckily found enough time, to work together as a team to put together plans for development which has helped us significantly with time management and has allowed us to get some work done.
Luckily we have had much help from our mentor from the summer project Madis Vasser, the co-creator of Futuruum. Madis taught our team how to use all the widely available tools to achieve a great product. He has kept us on the right track as we have previously gotten a little distracted and/or overwhelmed by the tasks we have to do.
Recently, we participated with VReaction in a worldwide idea generating competition called ISO World Standards Day 2018. We decided to take part just to see what would come out of it. When we were hit by the news that we were selected into the top ten from thousands of entries, we were overjoyed. We were in an even bigger euphoria when we learned that we had won second place. That was a clear wakeup call and realization for us that our idea has great potential. It gave us even more of a push and greater passion for VReaction. We also participated in the recent iduEDU education festival in Tallinn, where we held a workshop on developing for VR and how easy it is to take an idea and start changing the world.
We have had many new experiences through our commitment to our project. We have met many people from the field of education, science enthusiasts, and regular people who find our idea amazing. We have met countless people who have wanted to help. It is amazing for us to experience these high levels of approval for VReaction. This is why we keep developing it. We are not in it for any money or fame. We are in it because it gives us something that little else can give: the support and great messages, and the amazing experiences.
