TAKE A LOOK AT MODERN PHYSICS: VIRTUAL REALITY FOR SCHOOLS TO EXPLORE PARTICLE PHYSICS

Modern physics is often difficult to deal with for students, especially in school, because it is far removed from everyday experience. Indeed, it describes phenomena that cannot be observed with the naked eye, and which are characterized by counter-intuitive behaviors. Particle physics is an example of this. Thanks to new technologies, however, it is possible to bring even the youngest people closer to the themes of frontier research: this is the case with Virtual Reality (VR), which provides access to a realistic world by which one is enveloped, and which can be experienced firsthand. In the INFN section of Roma Tre, we have built a teaching activity that takes advantage of a VR application to bring students into the Belle II particle physics experiment. Thanks to the software it is possible to "see" the particle detector and the particles generated by the collision between an electron and a positron and their interactions inside the detector. In this talk we will present the educational activity that we developed and tested, and then proposed both to the general public, during Science Festivals, and to high school students. We will show the very positive feedback we received, both in terms of the enjoyment of the activity and the knowledge gained by the participants.