A Teaching Kinematics: Augmented Reality and Virtualization in the Observation

In the paper we report on an ongoing experiment aiming to use broadly principles and methods from virtual reality and augmented reality for didactical purposes, in particular in the filed of Kinematics. Key idea is that of providing the observer, an elementary school student, with real time information on the Kinematics of some moving object on which experiments are being carried on. This real time information will be provided by using the methods of augmented reality, that is superimposing to images from the real world proper computer generated images for velocities and accelerations; the user may watch to a physical experiment by means of a webcam: on the computer screen he will see real bodies and superimposed to these relevant graphical annotations, mainly vectors for velocities; also virtualization is achieved by means of sonification of the events; sounds controlled by time varying physical parameters are superimposed to the real scene in order to provide evidence of the events by means of augmented perception, using in this case, the acoustical channel for communicating events and parameters of the environment.