Summer, sunshine and science: Physics Day at Lagoon

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Thousands of students from Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming attended Physics Day at Lagoon amusement park on Friday.
• Utah State University professor JR Dennison, who started the event, praised its educational impact.
• Students engaged in activities like the egg drop and met STEM professionals.

SALT LAKE CITY — Thousands of students flooded Lagoon's amusement park Friday not just to ride rides, but to learn the science behind them.

In events coordinated by Utah State University representatives, elementary and secondary students from Utah and neighboring states put their minds to the test — and even if they didn't win one of the many coveted prizes, none left empty-handed.

Physics Day is an annual event that's been going on for almost 40 years. During the weeks leading up to it, students from Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Nevada prepared work in their science classes, getting ready to participate in a variety of activities under sunny skies at the Farmington park.

Whether it was measuring the g-forces on their favorite rides or designing models of roller coasters, the events gave students a chance to see physics in action — and then feel when the wind hit their face at the start of their favorite ride.

USU physics professor JR Dennison helped launch Physics Day 38 years ago, and has been involved every year since. He loves the way this event inspires kids to appreciate science.

"In physics (class), you talk about a block sliding down an incline plane," Dennison said, pretending to snore at the thought. "But the physics is exactly the same if it's a roller coaster screaming down the track, and it's a little easier to get kids excited."

Sky-high science comes alive

The most popular event was the egg drop. "People drop eggs off buildings all the time," Dennison said. At Physics Day, however, "we go one better: They're riding across the SkyCoaster."

Students arrived Friday prepared with containers and contraptions that would hopefully protect their fragile egg during a 40-foot fall. And, if that wasn't enough to think about, they also competed for the best aim, dropping their eggs over a large target on the ground and hoping for a bull's-eye.

Hattie Kercher and Winslo Wilson, fifth graders at Adams Elementary, talked about their egg drop experience with palpable energy.

Wilson had a smile on her face while she spoke about gravity and what her experiment taught her. Kercher, Wilson's partner, smiled too. "I like seeing all the things happen and seeing what physics can do," Kercher said.

Raiden Hess, an eighth grader from Shoreline Junior High, said his experiment made science more interesting to him. "Physics is a lot better now," he said. (And as a bonus, he won a frisbee for his egg-drop success.)

Inspiring ingenuity in the next generation

In addition to competing for prizes, students talked with representatives from STEM companies to learn about careers in the field. Dennison considers this the most beneficial part of the day.

"The students can see the fire in their eyes," Dennison said. "And it may only be a couple students of that whole crowd, but they're the ones that walk away going, 'I'm going to do that,' and that's what it's all about."

The real heroes behind Physics Day, Dennison said, are the teachers that bring their students.

"It's the teachers that do all the heavy lifting," he said. Their work in the classroom, before students even step foot on the hot gravel of Lagoon park, is what makes the magic possible.

"I was just talking to a middle school teacher. She brought a busload of 200 middle schoolers to Lagoon and turned them loose, and amazingly, most of them are off doing physics," he said.

Some teachers came to Physics Day when they were students themselves, and are now back, bringing their classes with them.

Dennison said Physics Day will keep on going for a long time. He hopes that, in addition to some good Aggie ice cream, students walk away with a deeper appreciation for physics.

"To see the enthusiasm of the teachers and especially the students ..." Dennison paused, speechless. "What can you say?"

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Utah higher educationScienceEducationDavis CountyUtah
Emily Walker