To create a physics laboratory for students, a school needs a variety of equipment, up-to-date software and a competent staff to carry out experiments.

“That’s what we’re used to (at the University),” said Physics Professor Mats Selen. “But it’s a pretty big commitment in space and money and not all places can do that.”

His hand-held device, the Interactive Online Lab system, is a cheap alternative for students to learn physics.

Selen received a research grant from the National Science Foundation, totaling over $390,000, for the project. While it’s only in its prototype stage, he hopes to have a finalized version of the hardware by next year.

“If we can get these things to work, students could still get a lab experience even if the course doesn’t have space in their building and the staff to do it,” Selen said.

The two-part device has a battery-operated box with a wireless transceiver that measures acceleration, displacement, force, position and magnetic fields. It then communicates this information to another device that’s hooked up to the computer where it is recorded and displayed as a graphic.

Another key component of this project was university students. Katie Crimmins, a fourth-year graduate student, works with Selen to develop online labs and activities so students can use the device to learn basic physics concepts. She said that she did not have a good high school physics experience because of poor funding.

“To have something like this that is not that expensive and can give students that lab experience is something great,” Crimmins said.

Kevin Sebesta, junior in LAS, also works with Selen creating online labs and activities. In the past year, Selen, Crimmins and Sebesta have sampled the system in University laboratories for introductory physics classes.

“The students in the fall used these in Physics 100 courses and it was very successful,” Sebesta said.

Selen is researching how this system could be used as a supplement to current University laboratories.

“The idea is that as they’re learning the material, we can give (students) a really quick activity — one to two minutes — where they do something with their hands right away as they’re learning it, rather than having to wait till next week,” he said.

Selen and his team found that students learn best when they work in a workshop format: small groups that receive class lectures and discuss and conduct the experiment in the same time and place.

“It’s not practical in a room of a thousand students,” Selen said. “But what we’re going to do is see what aspects of that we can use in a big class with this sort of technology.”

Ultimately, Selen wants the system to be used in other schools that are not as well-funded to educate more students about physics.

“For other places that may not even have labs right now, my hope is that this is a really low-cost way to bring labs to them,” Selen said, “whether a community college buys a bunch of these or a student buys them to use in some distance learning course online.”

Selen hopes that this device will be useful for students as well as teachers.

“It’s all kind of new but it has a lot of potential because you have the technology to build these things really cheap, and you have that technology to deliver lessons online. Both of those things together will make teaching better.”