Today was a pretty exhausting but fun day. My afternoon was taken up with the usual parts of my job – attending meetings, squeezing in some calculations, attending a seminar and meeting with students from my undergraduate class – PHY312 – Relativity and Cosmology: Einstein and Beyond – to discuss their end of semester projects.
But my morning was taken up with a less traditional activity. A high school teacher who comes to all of the Saturday Morning Physics lectures I run, is teaching a talented class of seniors in his school. They have been peppering him with questions about cosmology and particle physics over the last few months and, since these aren’t things he’s trained in, he decided to ask me if I’d come in to chat with them.
So this morning, two of my graduate students and I went out to the school and spent a couple of hours describing what we do, talking about cosmology, and taking great questions from about twenty students.
We had a blast! The students were tremendous fun and also very sweet. One of them (and her Mom I think) had even baked a cake for our visit that had “Thanks Dr. Trodden” and a couple of black holes iced on the top!
We talked about the physics of black holes, the expansion of the universe, dark energy, time travel, teleportation, and a host of other ideas. Perhaps best of all, they got to meet my students – who don’t at all resemble stereotypical physicists – and hopefully widen their idea of what scientists are like. If they enjoyed it anywhere near as much as I did, then I’ll be delighted.
March 25th, 2006 at 12:38 am
Sounds like fun! Cake makes everything fun….
March 25th, 2006 at 1:25 am
A friend in the town I’m visiting invited me to their high school career day last week, but we never got around to talking about careers — by the end there was a group of about 9 students (almost 10% of the senior class) gathered around the table just talking about physics and cosmology. When we ran out of time they asked if I would come back and talk to their physics class later that week. Both times they asked the most wonderful questions and we ran out of time once again, although I did manage to spend about 10 minutes of the hour (it was hard to get them to break away form the physics) talking about what I do as a physicist (answering the direct question “what is your typical day like?). I also mentioned the range of opportunities in the field, from theoretical physics to wintering over at the South Pole to working in medical physics, museums, and teaching.
It was very encouraging — especially since their interest, questions and responses indicated that they were lucky to have a fantastic teacher (and I told them as much). The room was filled with physics toys of all kinds, which I also pointed out was the sign of a true physicist.
One of the most important things we can do as physicists is to encourgage, train and then support more good high school physics teachers.
March 25th, 2006 at 2:06 am
It’s stories like this that make me wish I grew up near a university (instead of way out in the sticks, though that had its charms). Kudos to you and your students for giving the kids such an invaluable experience.
Any kids ask any questions that just floored you? You know, the sorts of questions that make adults boggle that kids know about this stuff?