Raising the Excitement Level
SPS president Sammi Rosenfeld and member Christos Kakogiannis work with oobleck in a still from a video entered into a science outreach contest. Image courtesy of the Union College SPS chapter.
The heart of the Union College physics and astronomy department lies on the ground floor of the new Integrated Science and Engineering Center, in the physics student lounge. Here, students gather to study together, relax, and attend regular SPS meetings. Although the building is new, the physics and astronomy department has a rich history at Union. Today, Union graduates between 5 and 15 physics majors a year, and they go on to work in fields as diverse as education, medicine, engineering, and finance, in addition to pursuing graduate studies in physics and astronomy.
Our chapter’s primary goal is always to get students—and the local community—excited about physics. One of our most successful events in recent years was the Ooblek Run, for which members filled kiddie pools with 750 pounds of cornstarch and added water to create a non-Newtonian fluid. We then invited members of the college community to experiment by running across it or applying different amounts of force, among other tests. For this demonstration, the chapter won a campus-wide award for the most unique event. Another successful event brought a group together to attend a public lecture by Neil deGrasse Tyson and to meet with the well-known astrophysicist.
We’re particularly enthusiastic about being able to conduct events in person, which has been more difficult lately because of COVID-19. In the coming year we hope to have movie nights, as well as another Ooblek Run. We’re also exploring the idea of partnering with the Classics Club to run a stargazing/mythology night, and we want to have some form of invited speaker series or possibly host dinner-and-discussion events. Ideally, we’d also like to build stronger connections with nearby chapters.
Union SPS has a tradition of running workshops each year that teach students how to use LaTeX, Mathematica, and Excel. These attract a lot of different student groups on campus and have even, on occasion, been attended by faculty. We also have outreach ties with our local public library, the Jewish Community Center, and the local science museum.
Our members regularly attend a variety of local conferences and meetings, including the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference and meetings of the New York State Section of the American Physical Society (NYSS/APS), the NY6 (a group of six small colleges in New York), the Astronomical Society of New York, and the American Geophysical Union.
Our Sigma Pi Sigma induction ceremony includes signing a ledger that we’ve had since our chapter was founded in 1975. There are even current faculty members at Union who signed the ledger when they were students. In the spring of 2020 the ceremony was virtual, so we weren’t able to continue the tradition at the time. But one year later we held a special joint induction ceremony and honored new members from both the current and the previous year. The event was held outdoors and was attended by all inductees. We’re looking forward now to a future filled with more SPS and Sigma Pi Sigma events.
The spring 2021 Sigma Pi Sigma induction ceremony included both the current and previous classes, pictured here along with faculty members. Photo courtesy of Nelia Mann.
