Sharing the Love of Physics

Our SPS chapter at Brigham Young University (BYU) has noticed a glaring lack of diversity in physics, particularly among our own student body. With an urge to make a change, we applied for an SPS Future Faces of Physics Award. Support from this grant allowed our chapter to recognize and address two specific ways to promote diversity in physics: raise excitement for physics among students from underrepresented demographics in the field, and give our undergraduate physics students an opportunity to practice sharing their passion for physics with others.

We began by reaching out to local schools with considerable percentages of students from underrepresented populations in physics, particularly Latino students, offering to present a demo show about fundamental physics concepts. We put together the show with help from the BYU physics education faculty. It addressed topics such as electricity and magnetism, Bernoulli’s principle, angular momentum, and conservation of energy. We tested and practiced each demo so that we knew how to best present complicated physical concepts to children, and made small demo kits to give to students that help explain some of the physical concepts. They contained objects such as a compass and magnet to demonstrate magnetism, and a battery and small light bulb from a chain of Christmas lights to demonstrate electricity.

We recently did our first presentation at Wasatch Elementary, located just a few minutes from our university. A small group of us attended the school’s Family STEM Night and presented our demo show. Then we split into smaller groups to work with the kids individually and explain how to use the objects in their demo kits. Overall, the outreach activity was a tremendous success, and we hope to be able to bring similar presentations to more schools in the future.

Through this experience we learned that one of the best ways to get excited about something is by sharing it with others. As I taught these children about physics, I discovered my own growing passion for learning how the world works and sharing that passion with others. We are incredibly grateful for the support that SPS provides as we promote physics in our local community.