Haptic applications as physics teaching tools

Touch is one of the most important senses in our everyday life when exploring and experiencing the physical world. It is, however, rare that haptic applications have been used to support learning at school. This paper describes a case study on utilizing haptic applications in the 8th grade physics learning. The study was carried out in a close collaboration with teachers in a real teaching environment by observing pupils' reactions and comments and by gathering the experiences of the teacher and the pupils. The Density application and the Leverage application that offer force feedback with the low-cost No-vint Falcon device were implemented to help in understanding the physical phenomena. The results were positive in regard to utilizing the sense of touch to enhance and to concretize often abstract physical phenomena.