On Saturday morning, when six-year-old Al Stevens' mother said they were going to the Physics Fair at Johns Hopkins, he excitedly asked "Rides?" When Mrs. Stevens answered negatively, he responded with one word: "Boring."
However, after a couple hours in Bloomberg watching demonstrations and participating in physics challenges for all ages, he found the Physics Fair to be anything but boring.
The Third Annual Physics Fair, held in Bloomberg by the Department of Physics and Astronomy, took place on Saturday during last weekend's Spring Fair.
The purpose of the Fair, which is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Quarknet and other scientific organizations, is to reach out to the community and spark people's interest in physics and the research taking place at Hopkins, as well as elsewhere in the field.
As physics professor Barry Blumenfeld pragmatically explained, "If [scientists] expect to get tax payers' money, they should let the tax payers know what they're doing."
Professors, graduate students and undergraduates all came together and volunteered their time to run different activities at the fair. These activities included demonstrations that took place all over the building to learn about different aspects of physics.
One of the exhibits was the rotation room, where visitors were shown how a spinning bike wheel with its center attached to a metal chain stays spinning and rotates around the metal chain when let go of, instead of falling to the ground.
Physics graduate students explained that this was because the torque and angular momentum are acting on the same plane, allowing the spinning wheel to stay suspended. On the second and third floors of the fair, visitors learned about optics and stars and were assisted in building mobiles of the ultraviolet universe.
Professor and physicist Richard Henry, who manned the optics station, said what he enjoys about this event is meeting people and seeing kids enthusiastic about learning.
Some of these enthusiastic students included juniors and seniors from Grey Mills public high school who received extra credit for attending. Amanda Connelly and Amber Shapiro, seniors from Grey Mills, said they were having fun watching all the demonstrations but they did have a complaint about the ice cream made from liquid nitrogen -- "It tasted like cough syrup."
One of the highlights of the fair was the Professor Extraordinaire show in, which electricity and magnetism demonstrations were given. Some of the favorite demonstrations among the audience, which filled the Bloomberg first floor auditorium, included cooking a pickle with an electric current and lighting up a light bulb with a Tesla coil.
The action-packed half-hour show included nearly all the demonstrations shown over the course of a semester to an introductory physics class on electricity and magnetism.
Professor David Kaplan, who performed the demonstrations, explained how exciting it was to be a scientist. Unlike being a student, "being a scientist means doing experiments where you don't know what's going to happen."
Attractions at the Physics Fair weren't just for younger crowd. Older visitors learned about the Hubble Space Telescope, the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer and the National Virtual Observatory.
The National Virtual Observatory (NVO) is like "astronomical Google," according to the volunteers at the NVO table. This tool allows scientists to see all data about one astronomical topic together in one place, even if the data is originally from diverse sources.
Not only does this tool provide the data, it allows for analysis of the data as well. After hearing about NVO, sophomore physics major Brendan McFarland said, "I never knew that existed, it's a good idea."
Overall fun was experienced by all who attended, even with the lack of rides. Many even went home with their own cardboard satellite models, mobiles of the ultraviolet universe or posters of ultraviolet views of nearby galaxies.
