Speaker
Description
The first detection of Gravitational Waves in 2015 marked the dawn of Gravitational Wave Astronomy, a new observational window to the Cosmos (Nobel Prize Physics 2017). Since then, the worldwide LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) network of gravitational wave detectors have measured well over a hundred gravitational wave signals. To make students share in the thrill of discovery in an authentic setting and make for an effective educational tool, members of the Virgo Educational Outreach Group have developed an app that lets high school students do analysis of data taken from the LVK-network by a guided series of steps. The app follows a dedicated pedagogical design which takes into account students’ background knowledge as well as difficulties and misconceptions in the relevant sub-domains of Physics. The app divides students into different groups, each of which gets assigned a gravitational wave signal as measured by one of three detectors (LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo), and lets each group clean their data, go through the process of matched filtering to find the best-fitting gravitational wave template, collaborate online to localize the GW source in the sky emulating the work of the LVK collaboration and compare their findings with the other groups. A key feature of the app is that it does not state the correct answers, and students are to find their results by active collaboration and data-sharing, and as such let them experience how it is to be a scientist. Aside from an education tool, the app is built as a didactical research method as well, as it tracks, among other metrics, how often students make use of the built-in explanations, how long they take to do each step, and how often they go back to redo steps when they found answers. The educational data acquired will be utilized to infer the efficacy of the app itself, the students' understanding of gravitational wave detection, and their confidence level of the results obtained. These findings also serve as a strong foundation for the creation of similar apps in neighbouring fields in STEM and of current and upcoming science experiments.A first version of the GW app has already been field tested with small groups of students in the Einstein Telescope Educational Centre in Netherlands and within 2025. A new version under development will act as the basis for a Gravitational Wave Masterclass, following the IPPOG International Masterclasses paradigm, and is expected to be rolled over high school classes in the various Virgo Collaboration countries by the end of 2025.
In this contribution, we present the GW app, its key design characteristics and discuss findings from the first round of pilot testing in Netherlands.
