Fluid Mechanics Education Using Japanese Anime: Examples from "Castle in the Sky" by Hayao Miyazaki

Current K-12 and undergraduate students have grown up with constant exposure to visual popular culture (e.g., movies, TV programs, graphic novels, etc.). Because youth find pop culture references in the classroom to be engaging, many science and engineering instructors have shown that examples found in visual pop culture can be used to teach science and engineering concepts. One recent study on the efficacy of using pop culture for instruction found that high school students learning from graphic-novel style comics acquired deeper understanding of complex subject matter and reported higher engagement with the instructional materials as compared to students learning from traditional text materials. Furthermore, the increased engagement with the instructional comics was even greater for students who were less likely to self-identify as a "science person."