While most people were outside celebrating Spring Fair last Saturday, the physics department was busy hosting the sixth annual Physics Fair. The fair is aimed at "K through grey," according to Pam Carmen, who runs the Physics Fair.
The fair included many give-aways and activities. Some activities were the Science and Physics Challenge - both of which were done through multiple choice tests - the Professor Extraordinaire Show and the Science and Physics Bowls - which are team competitions in the likes of "It's Academic."
A high school teacher originally thought of the idea for the event during a workshop with high school students, after they were asked what Hopkins can do to get science out into the community. Professor Bruce Barnett, who was in attendance at this meeting, took the idea to the board.
The main goal of the event is to try to attract students from elementary school to high school, especially those interested in physics.
"We can hopefully get the students more interested and more knowledgeable," Barnett said.
Most of the people who attended the fair were Baltimore-area students. Many schools send teams, but over the years, kids have started to form their own teams without help from their schools.
The largest attraction, according to Carmen, has always been the Professor Extraordinaire Show. Physics professor Peter Armitage has hosted the event for the last three years. The event lasts 45 minutes and is centered around a different theme each year.
The Professor Extraordinaire Show involved many exciting different demonstrations, and this year's theme was vacuums and pressure. Each demonstration was aimed at children, and as it progressed, the vacuums became more and more advanced. The show had already been put on once before this year.
One experiment showed how different gases have different properties and involved lighting balloons of these gasses on fire. Some balloons had much louder explosions than others. Other balloons filled with different gasses such as air, sulfur and helium were passed around the audience as well. Children were also able to go up onto the stage and be enclosed in a shrink-wrapped bag that air was vacuumed out of.
A lot of the demonstrations Armitage performed were visually impressive and entertaining, which was obviously part of the show's goal in presenting physics to a younger audience.
"Part of physics lectures and physics in general is not just writing equations on the board, it's also that we do demonstrations in front of the students to illustrate some of the important concepts," Armitage explained.
Additionally, the Physics Bowl and Science Bowl were other popular attractions in the fair. This competition had students in teams of four that competed simultaneously. Teams were expected to answer questions and put these answers into a CPS system, and the results were displayed in real time. Winners of the competition got individual certificates and a team trophy.
Of Armitage's presentation, Caryn Carson, a 14-year-old freshman at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute said, "I think that the presentation was really fun. It was aimed at a younger crowd, but I still enjoyed it."
Carson also participated in the Physics Bowl. She got involved because her physics teacher made an announcement that the competition would be happening, and she formed a team because it sounded like it would be fun.
Many undergraduate and graduate Hopkins students and professors were involved in the fair. Sophomore Mark Ziegler was involved in the fair for the second year in a row. He said that an e-mail went out to students in the physics major asking if they wanted to get involved in the fair, and that it was all voluntary.
"We don't get any credit, but there is a free shirt. So I guess that counts," he joked.
Each student is assigned to run a different experiment. However, professors usually run the more complicated booths.
In the future, "We want to get bigger and better and get more people. We really want to get more students involved," said Barnett.
