I used to watch The Magic School Bus in elementary school (as I’m sure many students in the US have as well).

It’s part of what makes our young selves fall in love with science: adventure, interactivity, curiosity.

What if we could bring all of that to our traditional science education? What if learning science was just like playing Minecraft or being part of The Magic School Bus? That would be awesome.

The metaverse provides an opportunity to do all that.

🎙 Δx podcast

Aditya Vishwanath is the founder and CEO of Inspirit, an immersive virtual reality education company. He is also currently pursuing a PhD at the Stanford Graduate School of Education as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar.

Inspirit is rethinking education from first-principles using VR and the metaverse.

I think the metaverse is an opportunity to rethink from first principles how we can build a safe and democratized space of creativity.

In this episode, we talk:

• 👓 Virtual reality / Human-computer interactions

• 🔬 Science education

• 🌌 Future of metaverse

📰 Δx change

The 3 most awe-inspiring pieces of news I found this week:

1. 🧀 MIT creates new material stronger than steel: Using a novel polymerization process, MIT chemical engineers have created a new material that is stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities. The new material is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. Until now, scientists had believed it was impossible to induce polymers to form 2D sheets.

   

2. 🔭 Webb telescope detects first photons: The achievement was confirmed by the Near Infrared Camera, one of the science instruments onboard, which captured the photons. Confirming that photons can pass into the telescope and show up on its detectors is crucial for the next stage of aligning the 18 beryllium and gold segments that, as a unit, comprise the Webb’s mirror.

   

3. 💧 First direct evidence that water has two liquid forms: Some chemists have come to think of water as not being one liquid at all, but two distinct liquid phases that coexist in a mixture. Now, physicists might have made the first direct observation of the transformation between the two states, in supercold water mixed with trehalose, a natural antifreeze that keeps the liquid from freezing.

   

Thanks for reading!

<3,

Ellen