Spring Break
Western has fun with physics
Amy Stevens
Issue date: 3/26/03 Section: News
- Page 1 of 1
Physics students and professors from Western Illinois University wowed their audience with experiments such as shooting 120 volts of electricity through a pickle Tuesday night in Currens Hall during their “More of Our Favorite Things” presentation.
The audience, composed of Western Illinois students, alumni and kindergartners from Roseville, Ill., was left wondering how such things could happen, and the program’s hosts happily answered with basic principles of physics.
John Schaefer, junior pre-engineering major, laid on a bed of nails while explaining that the hundreds of nails served as pressure points to support his body, and because there were so many nails (pressure points), he didn’t feel any pain.
Another demonstration included dropping a teddy bear and shooting a tennis ball so that it hit the bear in a mid-air collision.
Physics professor James Rabchuck delighted the crowd when he made a 6-foot bubble and then proceeded to blow bubbles a foot in diameter. He explained the bubbles were colorful because their film was so thin that it reflected color from both sides and caused a stream of moving colors.
Other presentations showed the correlation between distance and time, and what happens when someone puts a racquetball in a vat of liquid nitrogen. (It shatters.)
The physics students have been studying and researching these demonstrations.
“It was pretty interesting. Now I know what physics students think of when they’re bored. I’m envious that they get to play with all that neat stuff,” said Lucas Young, senior recreation, parks and tourism administration major.
Teresa Craft, junior physics major, demonstrated the effects of a tornado on building materials by shooting a pencil through plywood. She said this program was a good way to show the public that physics can be interesting and useful.
“This program, first off, advertises to Western students that there is a physics program, which a lot of people don’t know, and it’s a way to entertain people and expand their knowledge base,” Craft said.
“Physics sometimes gets a bad rap for being hard to understand, but this program shows that if we can teach it to 8-year-olds, then obviously people of all ages can gain an understanding.”
Craft whetted her appetite for physics at a young age because her father is an engineer. Her interest in the subject increased after she had a “great” physics teacher in high school.
She plans to teach physics after she graduates, and encourages others to give physics a chance and to learn what it’s all about.
“Physics has good job security because there is a great shortage in the field. Physics is such an everyday practical thing to know that you just can’t go wrong with physics,” she added.
The audience, composed of Western Illinois students, alumni and kindergartners from Roseville, Ill., was left wondering how such things could happen, and the program’s hosts happily answered with basic principles of physics.
John Schaefer, junior pre-engineering major, laid on a bed of nails while explaining that the hundreds of nails served as pressure points to support his body, and because there were so many nails (pressure points), he didn’t feel any pain.
Another demonstration included dropping a teddy bear and shooting a tennis ball so that it hit the bear in a mid-air collision.
Physics professor James Rabchuck delighted the crowd when he made a 6-foot bubble and then proceeded to blow bubbles a foot in diameter. He explained the bubbles were colorful because their film was so thin that it reflected color from both sides and caused a stream of moving colors.
Other presentations showed the correlation between distance and time, and what happens when someone puts a racquetball in a vat of liquid nitrogen. (It shatters.)
The physics students have been studying and researching these demonstrations.
“It was pretty interesting. Now I know what physics students think of when they’re bored. I’m envious that they get to play with all that neat stuff,” said Lucas Young, senior recreation, parks and tourism administration major.
Teresa Craft, junior physics major, demonstrated the effects of a tornado on building materials by shooting a pencil through plywood. She said this program was a good way to show the public that physics can be interesting and useful.
“This program, first off, advertises to Western students that there is a physics program, which a lot of people don’t know, and it’s a way to entertain people and expand their knowledge base,” Craft said.
“Physics sometimes gets a bad rap for being hard to understand, but this program shows that if we can teach it to 8-year-olds, then obviously people of all ages can gain an understanding.”
Craft whetted her appetite for physics at a young age because her father is an engineer. Her interest in the subject increased after she had a “great” physics teacher in high school.
She plans to teach physics after she graduates, and encourages others to give physics a chance and to learn what it’s all about.
“Physics has good job security because there is a great shortage in the field. Physics is such an everyday practical thing to know that you just can’t go wrong with physics,” she added.
