Shrink or Grow the Kids? Scale Cognition in an Immersive Virtual Environment for K-12 Summer Camp

Virtual reality (VR) has been widely used for education and affords embodied learning experiences. Here we describe: Scale Worlds (SW), an immersive virtual environment to allow users to shrink or grow by powers of ten (10x) and experience entities from molecular to astronomical levels: and students' impressions and outcomes from experiencing SW in a CAVE (Figure 1) during experiential summer outreach sessions. Data collected from post-visit surveys of 69 students, and field observations, revealed that VR technologies: enabled interactive learning experiences: encouraged active engagement and discussions among participating students: enhanced the understanding of size and scale: and increased interest in STEM careers.