Collaborative smartphone experiments for large audiences with phyphox

European Journal of Physics, vol. 43, pp. 055702

Abstract

Abstract We present methods to implement collaborative experimentation with smartphone sensors for larger audiences ranging from typical university undergraduate courses of hundreds of students in a lecture hall to world-wide outreaches on the Internet. These methods are based on the app ‘phyphox’, which is being developed by the authors, and encompass simple data collection via web forms as well as a new network interface for ‘phyphox’, allowing to collect real-time experiment data from an audience on-site or easy data submission for remote participants. Examples are given with practical considerations derived from first implementations of this method in a lecture hall with 350 undergraduate students as well as a global experiment to determine the Earth’s axial tilt with smartphones.

Authors 7

1. Sebastian Staacks corresponding Aachen Institute of Physics I and II

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Physics I and II, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, GERMANY

2. Dominik Dorsel Aachen Institute of Physics I and II

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Physics I and II, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, GERMANY

3. Simon Hütz Aachen Institute of Physics I and II

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Physics I and II, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, GERMANY

4. Frank Stallmach

   Leipzig University

   Affiliation as printed

   Didactic of Physics, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Sachsen, GERMANY

5. Tobias Splith

   Leipzig University

   Affiliation as printed

   Didactic of Physics, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Sachsen, GERMANY

6. H. Heinke Aachen Institute of Physics I and II

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Physics I and II, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, GERMANY

7. Christoph Stampfer Aachen Institute of Physics I and II

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Physics I and II, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, GERMANY