High-Level Project Summary
As a solution to the challenge we developed a quiz game to help kids and teens learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope’s instruments and recent images. The quiz game contains questions about JWST main instruments (NIRCam, NIRSpec, MIRI, FGS/NIRISS) and most prominent images that were captured recently. The player has to guess the object on the photo or the instrument that was used.If the answer is incorrect, the information block is presented with facts about the object or instrument as well as new discoveries that were made.When playing the game player learns to distinguish galaxies and nebulas, planets and stars as well as how JWST instruments are used to study them.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
Nowadays it becomes harder and harder to motivate kids to learn science. `Distractors like mobile games and social media apps contribute to this problem. So we decided to build a mobile quiz game that will be fun and beautiful but also inspire kids to learn more about cosmos exploration.
The app contains information about main instruments of JWST and its recent images. However we added gamification for engagement. When playing the game player learns to distinguish galaxies and nebulas, planets and stars as well as how JWST instruments are used to study them. We think that it is important to understand why the specific instrument was build and what new discoveries it brings with every image.
This interactive quiz game could be installed on mobile device (Android or iPhone) as well as on desktop (Mac or PC).
In order to achieve this we used Qt Quick framework. Not only it allows to build apps for the variety of platforms but it is also good for kids to learn programming. So our goal was to improve programming skills, expand knowledge about JWST and verify that it is possible to build educational or science apps using Qt Quick framework.
This brings us to the next phase of the project which was out of scope of the hackathon. Behind every discovery there is something hidden we tend to forget about - the efforts of software engineers and programmers. Programming becomes crucial skill for science. And we want to emphasise this. Using the experience we acquired we plan to build a tutorial for kids on how to create science games and quizzes. Qt Quick could be a great alternative to Scratch for kids that want to learn programming.
The working prototype for Android could be downloaded here: https://github.com/sprokipchyn/jwst-quiz/releases/download/v0.1/jwst-quiz-android.apk
Space Agency Data
All images and information used in the app were taken from https://webbtelescope.org/resource-gallery/images.
Hackathon Journey
My son and I had a great experience. This was our first time, so it was challenging to figure out all the rules.
My son is a big fan of JWST. We watched the launch, keep an eye on every major milestone and were excited with the first images. With this challenge we put that passion into practice.
As soon as we read the challenge - we knew what to do. We've been learning Qt programming for a few weeks and we had few quiz games to start from.
Overall it was cool and interesting and I appreciate the bonding with my son during this challenge.
References
- All images and information used in the app were takes from https://webbtelescope.org/resource-gallery/images.
- Qt Framework was used to create the app: https://www.qt.io/product/framework
Tags
#jwst #quiz #android #iphone #qt