SBIR Phase II: Interactive, Combined Circuit & 2D Field Simulator for Educational Mobile Game

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research SBIR Phase II project will be achieved through creation of a new way of teaching abstract scientific concepts, like electricity and magnetism, and presenting them in an approachable, visual way. The project involves the expansion of the interactive, combined circuit and field simulator built in Phase I. The phase II research will include adapting the existing simulator to cover additional topics covered in middle school and high school physics, for example: semiconductors, solar panels, LEDs, transistors, logic circuits, memory, computers, etc. This innovation is a complex simulator that allows users to "play" with charges, conductors, magnets, generators, motors, and particle accelerators. This allows the user to feel confident with the concepts before they dive into the complex mathematical equations behind the science, which often intimidate students. The goal is to make this very challenging material easier for young people to understand, ultimately inspiring more students to pursue engineering and physics degrees in higher education. The intellectual merit of this SBIR Phase II project lies in developing a new simulator that will be parallelized. Simulating a semiconductor in real-time (60 frames per second) would require handling the electric/magnetic field and diffusion behavior of hundreds to thousands of charges simultaneously and has never been accomplished. Modeling diffusion and increasing the particle count to thousands will require a parallelized, GPU-based simulation engine to handle the physics of the large number of particles required. This is equivalent to incorporating Fick's Law for diffusion and the continuity equations for semiconductor current into the company's existing electricity and magnetism engine. Using this updated engine, students can intuitively learn about the technologies surrounding them (computers, solar power, LEDs, etc.). Additionally, the GPU-based engine will be inherently cross-platform so that it can be used on any device (Apple, Chromebook, PC, etc.). This interactive field and circuit simulator is the first of its kind, and is ideal for allowing students to visualize, experiment with, and intuitively understand complex electricity and magnetism topics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.