Virtual Reality Puts Disabled Students In Touch

By Sara Sklaroff

Chris Dede envisions a future in which students will not study science in cluttered and potentially dangerous laboratories. Instead, they will learn in a limitless "virtual world.''

Rather than huddle over lab tables, he says, students will plug into computer workstations that will simulate--in an astoundingly realistic, three-dimensional form--not only the experience of conducting a chemistry experiment, but also such exotic adventures as "becoming'' an electron.

With the help of a two-year, $950,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, Mr. Dede is studying whether a sophisticated--though still-developing--technology known as virtual reality can help make science more...