A HAPTIC-ENHANCED FRAMEWORK FOR THE TEACHING OF CHEMISTRY

Haptic technologies have received increasing attention in recent years. Many works in literature show how it is used for the training of highly-specialized personnel, before their direct application in a specific domain. The sensation of touch and / or force experienced by the user can also be employed for didactic purposes. With respect to the educational context, the use of learning environments coupled with haptic technologies can significantly contribute to the experimentation and simulation of sensations that cannot be experienced directly in the real world. In other cases, instead, they can be used to help students to become familiar with concepts otherwise knowledgeable only through textbooks, with the difficulties related to correct learning of the phenomena. In this work, a haptic system developed specifically for tactile exploration of the electrostatic surface of molecules is presented. After a brief description of the architecture, the article describes how it has been introduced in the usual teaching activity. The users feedbacks and impressions are also reported for an assessment of the goodness of didactic innovation.