Children were using robotic arms to lift small items and move them. They were flying and landing airplanes on flight simulators, making liquid tornadoes in plastic bottles, rolling balls of various sizes in an inverted cone to learn about centrifugal force and rubbing a small disco floor to turn on lights of different colors using static electricity.
Those were just a small fraction of the 300-plus hands-on science experiments that were available March 1 at Colorado State University’s annual Little Shop of Physics at the Lory Student Center.
The event was free and open to all.
“We joke our ages are womb to tomb, so we capture everybody in there,” said Heather Michalak, director of CSU’s Little Shop of Physics.
Most participants, though, were school-age children and teenagers, accompanied by parents or grandparents.
Each of five ballrooms inside the student center had a different scientific theme for people to explore. Magnetic fields, light, sound, electricity, gravity, the Earth’s atmosphere, the human body and brain. Pretty much anything related to physical science.
Liam Bois, 16, said his favorite displays involved human muscles and their involuntary actions. His younger brother Tomas, 14, said the Tesla coil was his favorite.
More than 8,000 people attended this year’s event, Michalak said afterward.
One of the most popular attractions was the CSU Physics Club’s teddy bear toss held on a grassy hill outside of the student center.
Using a trebuchet they built out of wood, gymnasium weight plates, and other materials, students catapulted miniature teddy bears every 30 minutes to a waiting throng of children, who scrambled to claim one. The mechanical contraption, the students said, was a modern version of ones used in medieval times to launch rocks and burning objects over castle walls.
Nearby, there was a table where people could create their own paper rockets and, with help from CSU students, launch them high into the air using air pressure generated with hand pumps. There was another station where people could create giant bubbles using various solutions of soap and water.
Other outdoor exhibits included a race car, all-terrain vehicle and CSU’s Sci on the Fly mobile lab, a 37-foot trailer outfitted with virtual reality headsets that let people explore CSU’s human and animal biology programs that students use in the classroom and high-end gaming computers that teach youth about the deep connections between humans, animals and the environment.
The Little Shop of Physics open house began in 1992 and has been held annually since, other than a two-year hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, Michalak said.
Most of the exhibits are created by undergraduate students in CSU’s College of Natural Sciences, she said. But other CSU departments get involved, too, along with other partners interested in sharing their science knowledge with the community.
Thirty-eight partners were involved in this year’s open house, Michalak said, including a group of eighth grade students from Wellington Middle High School, who designed over 100 experiments in just two days as part of a class assignment.
Best of all, many of the participants said, was the final demonstration of the day. Using liquid nitrogen and dairy products donated by Morning Fresh Dairy, students made dozens of large bowls of ice cream that were served in small cups to anyone who wanted one.
The goal, Michalak said, is to provide CSU students with the opportunity to share their science knowledge with the community while also sharpening their own presentation and communication skills.
“This is like a giant amalgam,” Michalak said. “Not only do we get to share cool science with everybody, but the undergraduate students who work for us and volunteers who come out for the day, they’re learning how to science communicate — how to build projects, how to facilitate project management.
“So, for us, today is our pinnacle.”
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell, threads.net/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: 8,000+ get taste of ‘cool science’ from CSU’s Little Shop of Physics