Optical illusions are science, as is studying the visible light spectrum and learning how the color white is perceived.
“When you spin this color wheel, it gives you white,” physics major Luke Johnson explains to a sixth-grader. “It is similar to what goes on in a light bulb or in a TV.”
Welcome to Physics in Phun — part science open house, part carnival of demonstrations on the physics all around us.
University of Maryland physics professor Richard Berg created the program 25 years ago to demonstrate that physics can be entertaining and informative.
Since then, he has opened the doors to the free event four times a year and has amassed a library of projects numbering about 1,500. Rotating the subject matter and demonstrations keeps the program exciting and, well, fun — if not phun.
“I do this to get people excited about physics,” Mr. Berg says. Physics is Phun primarily is aimed at high-school physics students, but preteens often attend, as well as University of Maryland students.
“A couple of people who have participated over the years have ended up being physics majors,” Mr. Berg says. “There was one program, where I was demonstrating Newton’s Law and I put a pencil through a piece of plywood and another one where I had a coil that blasted a can into two pieces. When he graduated, that student said he still had the pencil and the can from Physics is Phun.”
“It’s Physics” and “The Atom” were this school year’s fall and winter programs. “The Physics IQ Test” is the theme of programs taking place May 8, 9 and 10.
The March program was all about color-mixing, origins and vision. Physics is Phun depends on student volunteers to facilitate the dozen or so demonstration stations in the Physics Lecture Hall on the Maryland campus.
Graduate student Alex Curtin had the measured patience of a teacher when explaining how color-mixing works to a middle-schooler.
“When you are looking at light, you are seeing light reflected,” she says, showing the young student slides that mix spectral colors. “I had an art teacher who made this simple for me.”
Ms. Curtin says events like this show that science can explain and entertain.
“You grow up and watch cartoons and you see scientists as the ones in the lab coats and the glasses,” she says. “We’re not all like that. Outreach is important.”
Wendy Herndon, a math teacher at Jewish Primary Day School in the District, says she brings her fifth- and sixth-grade students to Physics is Phun regularly.
“There is so much math here,” she says. “They love the hands-on stuff.”
Eventually, the hands-on portion gives way to a lecture presentation from Mr. Berg. Many of the high-schoolers will get extra credit for spending the evening listening and learning. Still, some nonscience types still need convincing that physics is indeed phun.
“Sometimes I like physics,” says Rachel Zucker, a junior at McLean High School. “Physics just doesn’t like me.”
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