The Week Junior - UK (2022-04-23)

15

Science and technology

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Virtual reality recreates

a Roman’s eye view

I

n AD79, the ancient Roman city

of Pompeii, in southern Italy, was

destroyed by a volcanic eruption

that buried many of its buildings.

Archaeologists (experts who study

man-made objects to understand

history) have been observing

it for almost 300 years

but now they have

a new tool for

understanding

how Pompeii

might once have

looked – virtual

reality (VR).

Researchers

Danilo Campanaro

and Giacomo Landeschi,

from Lund University in

Sweden, used data collected by drones

flying over the ruined Roman city to

create a 3D computer reconstruction of

one of its most impressive buildings.

They then fed the reconstruction into a

video game system called Unity (which

is used by the smartphone game

Pokémon Go) to make a VR model.

The idea is not just to recreate the

buildings but also to understand a bit

more about how Roman people might

have experienced them.

Campanaro and Landeschi

asked volunteers to

take a virtual tour

of the house in

both summer

and winter light.

The researchers

used special

eye-tracking

technology to

record exactly which

areas people looked at

and for how long. From this,

the team concluded that the building

used clever design to draw attention to

objects that showed off the wealth and

status of its owner – perhaps a man

called Lucius Valerius Flaccus, whose

ring was found in the ruins.

T

he Royal Meteorological Society

(RMetS) has launched a new

competition to increase young people’s

awareness of weather and climate

(long-term weather patterns) and

encourage them outdoors into nature.

Young Weather Photographer of the

Year is the junior version of an adult

contest that’s been running for six

years. Launched in partnership with

The Week Junior Science+Nature, the

competition is open to anyone below

the age of 18, with no minimum age.

RMetS is asking young people

to send in beautiful and thought-

provoking photographs of the weather.

They can be taken with a camera or a

mobile phone anywhere in the world.

“The only thing that’s certain about

the weather is that it’s unpredictable,

so I’m excited to see the images

our photographers capture,” said

Science+Nature editor Dan Green.

The competition opens very soon,

on 26 April, and closes on 28 June. It’s

free to enter but you’ll need a grown-

up to help with sending in your entry

to zealous.co/rmets

Weather photographers wanted

Enjoy these stories? Find more in this month’s The Week Junior

Science+Nature magazine sciencenature.theweekjunior.co.uk

The robot arm that’s

a snappy dresser

E

ngineers at Massachusetts

Institute of Technology (MIT) in

the US have designed a robot that

can help humans put on clothes

with sleeves. This is a tough task

for a robot to learn because

people’s arms and elbows move

around. A team taught the robot

to guess the position of a person’s

elbow and work out just how to

move and how much force is

needed to pull up the sleeve. They

say this opens the way for many

other applications, such as setting

a dinner table or tidying

up spilt building blocks.

Lending a

helping hand.

A new way of

seeing Pompeii.

2021’s Young Weather

Photograph of the Year.

23 April 2022 • The Week Junior

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Inside the

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