Saturday, Oct. 24, around 50 undergraduate and graduate students at the College of William and Mary organized and volunteered at the Wild West PhysicsFest at Small Hall. The festival featured carnival-style booth stations, interactive demonstrations, lab tours and lectures throughout the day.
“The purpose of the event is to have all of these stations that are very kid-friendly and interactive and really fun,” said Claire Johnson ’27, the lead student organizer. “They don’t really require any prior knowledge, but you get to do experiments that use physics.”
Alumni families attended the event, with mostly children manning the giant bubble wands and pompom slingshot demonstrations.
“Seeing these really little kids have so much fun and be so excited with the demos is really enjoyable,” Johnson said. “It’s a great feeling to see how excited other people can get about the field that I’m in.”
Preparation and planning for the event lasted over two months and involved coordinating theme, design and booth ideas. Students were encouraged to attend or participate through their STEM lectures, various western-themed flyers posted around Small Hall and word of mouth.
Attendee Sahana Rajesh ’30 tested the slingshot station, where participants launched pompoms at soda cans at a certain distance away from the table.
“A friend told me to come to the PhysicsFest today,” Rajesh said. “It was a good way to talk to some of the volunteers and play a fun game.”
Alumni and research professors also shared their personal experiences and scientific findings at the event.
The College’s Society of Physics Students supports career-oriented goals for students interested in STEM and physics by facilitating networks of mentors who are researchers, alumni and professionals. Johnson, SPS’ president, said the event contributed to the group’s outreach efforts.
“I met a woman who graduated [in the] Class of 1979, when it wasn’t as common for women to be physics majors,” Rajesh said. “She was one of two physics majors in her class, and it was just really interesting to talk to her and see how William and Mary’s grown over the years.”
Professor of physics Patricia Vahle delivered a lecture-style presentation on the research and history of discovering neutrinos, electrically neutral subatomic particles.
“The universe has lots of secrets, but neutrinos may hold the key to understanding the source of some of these mysteries,” Vahle said.
Vahle also discussed the technology that made neutrino discoveries possible.
“Particle physics is often called big science, and that’s because in order to study these very smallest chunks of matter, we have to build the biggest and the most complicated machines,” she said.
Johnson described the event as a reflection of the College’s physics department.
“I think the culture within the physics department here is really, really good,” Johnson said. “It’s very supportive. We get together, and we help each other with homework and we help teach people topics that they’re struggling with.”
