Chi‐Chang Chen

Augmented reality (AR) has been recognized as a potential technology to help students link what they are observing in the real world to their prior knowledge. One of the most challenging issues of AR-based learning is the provision of effective strategy to help students focus on what they need to observe in the field. In this study, a competitive gaming approach is proposed to support AR-based learning activities conducted in real-world contexts. An experiment has been conducted on an elementary school ecology course to explore the effectiveness of the proposed approach in comparison with the conventional AR-based mobile learning approach in field trips. The experimental results show that the AR-based gaming approach can improve not only students' learning attitudes, but also their learning performance on the field trip. Accordingly, discussions and some suggestions for future work are provided.

Liquid films with thicknesses on the order of 1 mm were commonly used for the study of drop impingement onto a wetted surface. This is because films thinner than 1 mm are difficult to generate and measure due to capillary meniscus. In this work a novel method to produce thin films of well-defined thickness has been developed. Also a reliable process with minimum uncertainty to determine film thickness was proposed. New splashing phenomena were observed for drop impact onto thin films. It is found that the critical splash level (the threshold Weber number) is insensitive to film thickness for a given solid surface if the film is sufficiently thin. It is also shown that the critical splash level increases with liquid viscosity.

Mono- and di-alkylated polyethylenimines (PEI-1R, PEI-2R) were synthesized and used as both reductants, by exploiting the functionality of the polyethylenimine's (PEI) amino groups, and stabilizers able to protect nascent gold nanoparticles generated from hydrogen tetrachloroaurate (HAuCl4). From TEM images of the stained polymers, it is clear that the polymer micelles are round and well-structured when formed from PEI-2R, fused and less well-structured when formed from PEI-1R, and totally nonstructured when formed from PEI. These findings coincide with the results found by using pyrene as a probe to investigate aggregation behavior, where PEI-2R with a fluorescence intensity ratio (I1/I3) of 1.48 forms the more closely packed polymer micelles than PEI-1R (I1/I3 = 1.64) and PEI (I1/I3 = 1.72). The use of the highly alkylated polymer micelle (PEI-2R) results in the fastest reduction of HAuCl4, and gives the most effective protection to the generated gold nanoparticles. When used at higher polymer concentrations than required for micelle formation, it was found that polymer hydrophobicity was highly influential in directing the nanoparticle's morphology, i.e., the resulting polymer micelles were labeled with perfect and round necklace-like gold nanoparticles when PEI-2R was used, and imperfect and less round gold nanoparticles when PEI-1R was employed. These structures were totally absent when PEI was used. The use of alkylated PEI, being able to act simultaneously as both a reductant and as a very effective protective agent, greatly simplifies the process used for preparing gold nanoparticles.

Mono- and dialkylated polyethylenimines (PEI-1R and PEI-2R) were used for the facile synthesis of gold nanoplates with a preferential growth direction along the Au (111) plane. It was found that polymer hydrophobicity greatly influenced the nanoparticle morphology. PEI-1R in the acidic aqueous solution with a smaller degree of alkylation effectively adsorbed on the surface of gold nanoplates with the protonated ethylenimine groups rather than being aggregated in the bulk aqueous phase to form polymer aggregates as compared to the situation for PEI-2R. Loose alkylated PEI aggregates in acidic solution promote the formation of gold nanoplates by means of the anion-induced cation adsorption on certain crystallographic facets during the growth of gold particles. Without incorporating alkyl groups, however, the TEM image of the gold colloid solution with PEI showed only the formation of spherical gold nanoparticles by the same process. The morphology of gold nanoparticles was tuned not only by varying the degree of alkylation of PEI samples but also by the solvent type and pH value of the solution. By utilizing differently alkylated PEIs as reducing agents, this facile synthetic procedure can selectively result in the formation of gold nanoplates at room temperature without an extra inducing process.