Newsletters

Letter from the Chair

Shireen Adenwalla
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

Happy New Year! Although 2022 is off to a rather rocky start, we can cautiously hope that the latter part of the year allows for in-person conferences, travel and visits to friends and family - in other words, the everyday joys of a somewhat normal life.

2022 is also the 10th Anniversary of FOEP. I asked Dan Dahlberg and Jim Kakalios, both stalwarts of FOEP, for a brief history. Dan Dahlberg, who was actively involved in its creation, recalled that it grew out of an APS committee, the Committee to Inform the Public (CIP). At the time, CIP was a small committee of ~6 members, charged with creating better connections between physicists and the public. The creation of the Forum was an effort to increase these connections by increasing the number of APS members involved in outreach and engagement. The first FOEP Executive Committee, chaired by Paul Chaiken, was formed in 2011. Jim Kakalios recalls being elected as the first Past-Chair "even though I had not been Chair, I was the first Past-Chair. Or rather, the Past-Chair for the first time." (He was past Chair again in 2020! Yay Jim!) Dan was the Secretary/Treasurer till 2021 - clearly FOEP is more than a passing fancy, so this might be another reason for our members to consider running for office. If it wasn't fun, they wouldn't be doing it for so long! 

Speaking of stalwarts, Shannon Greco, the past Chair steered FOEP through the worst of the pandemic with calm, tact, and foresight, organizing sessions for the virtual March and April meetings, communicating via flurries of emails, holding a virtual executive meeting, and cheerfully being available for brief communications at odd times. She deserves our collective thanks, and my particular thanks for the document she created outlining the Chair's responsibilities. We first met at the APS Leadership Council meeting in January 2020, in pre-COVID times (sigh!), and found that we had similar visions for FOEP.

The recent omicron surge led to a cancellation of the APS Annual Leadership meeting in the last week of January, a necessary but disappointing development. I had been looking forward to in-person meetings with the new Chair-Elect Roxanne Hughes and the new Secretary/Treasurer, Heide Doss, to discuss FOEP priorities, tactics for increasing membership, and the path forward - and to have a little bit of fun as well. Although virtual meetings are efficient, in-person discussions of tactics, purpose, and even budgets take on a different flavor that virtual meetings fail to replicate.

At this point, both the March and April meetings are set to be in-person meetings with virtual components. We have a strong presence at both meetings, with one invited and one contributed session at each. The invited speakers are a diverse and wide-ranging bunch.  Lindsay Olson is an artist specializing in science-inspired art who will bring some of her pieces to show at her talk. Abraham Asfaw is a quantum computationalist and educator and co-developer of QISKIT, an interactive textbook on quantum computing. Kathy DrinkInWater, the Chief Program Office at the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), will discuss how to increase the representation of Natives in STEM fields. For all the details and information of all the FOEP sessions see the meeting schedule at https://aps.org.

FOEP is also co-sponsoring three public events at the March meeting. There will be a lecture by Diandra Leslie Pelecky on the Physics of NASCAR, an evening of science songs by Nancy Ellen Abram, and a Friday evening outreach event to a local high school, Physics Fiesta. Physics Fiesta emerged via a conversation between the Chair-Elect of DCMP, Smitha Vishveshwaran, Brian Schwartz, and myself out of a common desire to make an impact on local area students. Our thought was that with over 10,000 physicists in Chicago, we have an excellent opportunity to interact with students on their turf. We will have physics-themed demos, rap battles, interpretive dances, and physicists on hand to chat with aspiring STEM majors.

My focus for FOEP in 2022 will be on increasing diversity at all levels: our membership, the executive committee, the outreach and engagement activities we highlight, the speakers we invite and the awards we sponsor. This includes diversity along numerous dimensions including ethnicity, gender, age, urban and rural communities, large wealthy universities, small private colleges, HBCUs, Hispanic serving institutions, and community colleges. There is a wealth of excellent and impactful outreach work that often goes unrecognized because our scattering cross-section is too small. FOEP is a fairly large forum having more than 2000 members; I urge all of you to invite, contact, and search out opportunities to dramatically amplify diverse viewpoints. As the APS statement on diversity states, "The health of physics requires talent from the broadest demographic pool." (https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/08_2.cfm). One of the few bright spots from COVID is how comfortable we have all become with the virtual world. This could have a dramatic impact on the audience for engagement and outreach activities. As always, younger people have more enthusiasm and original ideas on how to navigate the ins and out of the universe of technologies that are now available. This can be seen in the high proportion of student members in FOEP. At 43%, this is higher than most other forums, other than those devoted to early career scientists and graduate students. 

One of the risks that younger people face in devoting time to outreach and engagement is that these efforts have traditionally not been given much, if any, weight in hiring, tenure and promotion decisions. A recent statement and white paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.10623) put out by the APS shows the value and benefit of these activities to the institute and to the field of physics in general. The statement reads in part, "APS therefore strongly supports participation in informal education activities, and supports that such participation should be considered in recruiting and promotion decisions, including tenure decisions at universities and other forms of career advancement at non-academic institutions as appropriate." Although institutions are not required to follow these recommendations, they do constitute a strong endorsement of outreach activities.

Here's hoping for a healthy and calm 2022, with face-to-face meetings (one can dream...).

Shireen Adenwalla
Chair

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Spotlight on Outreach and Engaging the Public

Outreach Experiences

This issue highlights outreach experiences with contributions from Zelijka Popovic, a graduate student & Daniel Davis, a post-doc, both from the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University (FSU).

Communities thrive when people take the time to give back. Educational outreach events truly have made an impact on my life by providing supplemental learning in an interactive way. Over the years, these events taught me various learning techniques and made me realize that I am a visual hands-on learner. This helped me a lot with being able to verbalize my educational needs and motivated me to give back. I was thrown into outreach work with my undergrad’s American Chemical Society chapter. My undergrad is in a low socio-economic region in Georgia known for lack of school funding. We performed chemistry “magic shows” using common fun reactions such as elephant paste to teach various science concepts. Most of our work was focused on the local community, but we would travel over an hour to schools and community centers in the region as well. In addition to the shows, we would also host a whole week of events for the community during the ACS National Chemistry Week. Starting my first year, I was manning the liquid nitrogen ice cream station and I looked forward to it every year. I loved standing there for hours and watching people of all ages be amazed by the ice cream science magic.

Going into graduate school, I knew I wanted to continue doing outreach work and was delighted to learn about allthe opportunities at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Yearly, we have a lab-wide open house where we do various demonstrations related to our research fields. I help organize demonstrations, with chromatography butterflies being my favorite. Chromatography plays a critical role in my personal research, and it is great to be able to share and connect with the community in such a way. In addition to the demonstrations, I also make flyers for families to take home and do additional chromatography experiments where they can learn more about the science behind the experiments. To further the connection between the MagLab and the community, we include graphics relating the demos directly to the research we do.

The MagLab has also opened doors to community outreach outside of the lab. Throughout the year we receive emails requesting volunteers for science fair judging at local schools and regional events. Not only are the students beyond thankful to have real scientists judge, but they truly impress you with their work. The students continue to impress during our ‘Ask a Scientist’ events, where weekly through the summer students meet with scientists and ask any questions they want. It shows the diversity and variety of scientists at the lab and the students will really make you pause and think with their questions. Lastly, one of the largest outreach events that I participate in is the Tallahassee Science Festival. This festival is put on by various STEAM organizations, businesses, and interest groups around the area in downtown Tallahassee. The community in Tallahassee is truly invested in learning more and taking advantage of the outreach opportunities in their full capacity.

Contributed by Zelijka Popovic

Excitement! How often do scientists get to talk about the most interesting parts of their research field, the things that led them to want to dedicate their lives (professional and personal) to studying a small part of it? I was privileged as a graduate student to work with Ernesto S. Bosque who annually mentored middle school students. I would be in the lab preparing superconducting wire samples for testing and hear the students get exposed to the fundamentals of electricity for the first time, in the context of building ultra-high field zero-resistance superconducting magnets cooled with liquid helium at 4 Kelvin above absolute zero. Ernesto and I followed the parallel paths (Physics/Engineering) at FSU from undergraduate to graduate school to a post-doc at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, so we understood each other well and were used to relying on the other on theoretical/practical topics. This benefited us well in our research and development (R&D) group for developing prototype magnet technologies, where an egalitarian, “ideas-first” approach was common. So, with the middle school student, my colleague was quick to admit the limits of his knowledge and I enjoyed jumping in to explain the quirkiness of AC circuits and storing energy in a magnetic field for inductors. Our excitement and comradery were reflected in the mentee’s energy while building their first electromagnets and trying to explain back to us the results they got from measuring the current and magnetic field strength. It’s a joy to see the lessons that were hard-won for me in my studies become a basis for mentees creative new ideas.

I’ve now been a mentor for two years, learning and growing as a mentor with each new pair of students, especially when the challenges of COVID enforced remote interaction requiring greater planning and coordination. I have learned to prepare a concrete set of milestone goals for each session, to rely on the wonderful organizers, headed by Carlos R. Villa of the Center for Integrating Research and Learning (CIRL), at the MagLab, as well as other mentors’ expertise, and to try not to fall into the trap of taking on too much. The first year I partnered with Abiola Temidayo Oloye and I feel that our differences (field of study/gender/ethnicity/country of origin) were important examples that like the mentees, scientists have a variety of looks and interests and work together. Brainstorming sessions with other mentors and the program organizers ahead of time helped me cement my plans and build on other people’s great ideas, without overlapping their projects too much. For this age group (11-14 yrs), I learned to keep tasks to flexible 10 to 20 minute segments, with breaks or shifts to different content types (demos, theory, real-world examples, online research, calculations, and brainstorming) to avoid mental fatigue and make the best use of limited time. Repeat, repeat, repeat important content, even if students appear to understand, as they have much going on outside of this program, vying for recall. I find it most exciting when we develop an interesting circuit application naturally out of our discussions as in the case of using LEDs to rectify AC into DC to charge a battery, and then taking a slow-motion video with our phone cameras to see the LEDs turn on and off at 60 Hz. Each year, I am impressed by the mentees top-notch circuit analysis and poster presentations.

Despite multiple roles that can be part of being a mentor, a common core of mentorship is investment in the success of the mentee. Mentoring can include being a role model, a teacher, a confidant, an active listener, or a champion. Intergenerational mentoring makes one recognize their part in continuing and expanding our communities, this is especially necessary for science as a collaborative enterprise, where new discoveries are enabled by foundational work that can span multiple lifetimes and many fields of study. I enjoy being part of something greater than myself, made possible because of the awesome places I get to work at and the people they bring together. Building interest and motivating mentees to gain skills is best done as early as possible. The best time to prepare the next generation of scientists was a decade ago, the second-best time is today. In my experience, middle school is where you begin to develop mature ideas of the subjects you study, and begin to understand, with some work, the real complexities in the world. It is when I cemented my own enjoyment of math and science.

For a wider audience, our annual open house demonstrations, organized by Kristin Roberts of MagLab Public Affairs, draw an audience of thousands of people every year. My first year in research, I demonstrated superconducting flux pinning by levitating dinosaurs on liquid nitrogen cooled bulks. Without this forum I would almost never have conversations at the varying levels of complexity required to talk to people with a wide range of ages and backgrounds. This pushes me to find new ways to explain and demonstrate our science. While this can be draining, as it is difficult to relate much of the science that I find most interesting without a significant amount of uncommon background knowledge, I understand part of the motivation is to build that foundation and make it all the more accessible.

Supporting all this outreach is a huge investment of time, effort, and patience. It is important for institutions that value outreach to recognize and reward this effort as a core part of the job, valued on an equal footing with research and teaching, not tacitly expected as extra volunteer hours. The NHMFL demonstrates this with a core outreach team at our Center for Integrating Research and Learning, participation in the Open House, efforts to make mentoring a regular part of a researcher’s day, and including outreach in evaluations.

Contributed by Daniel Davis

Medal and Fellow Nominations for 2022

Dwight Nicholson Medal for Outreach

This award recognizes the humanitarian aspect of physics and physicists created through public lectures and public media, teaching, research, or science-related activities. Recognition consists of a stipend of $3,000, the Nicholson medal, and a certificate which includes the citation for which the recipient has been recognized. Up to $1,500 will be available for the recipient's travel expenses to the meeting at which the Medal is presented. It will be presented annually.

Establishment & Support

The Nicholson Medal was established in 1994 by the Division of Plasma Physics and the Forum on Physics and Society. It was originally named the Nicholson Medal for Humanitarian Service, and is currently administered by the Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public. The Medal is sponsored by the friends of Dwight Nicholson, and through generous gifts from Professor Herb Berk, the Medal will be awarded with a stipend of $3,000, beginning in Spring 2022.

Rules & Eligibility

The Nicholson Medal for Outreach shall be awarded to a physicist who either through public lectures and public media, teaching, research, or science related activities,

1. has successfully stimulated the interest and involvement of the general public on the progress in physics, or

2. has created special opportunities that inspire the scientific development of students or junior colleagues, or has developed programs for students at any level that facilitated positive career choices in physics, or

3. has demonstrated a particularly giving and caring relationship as a mentor to students or colleagues, or has succeeded in motivating interest in physics through inspiring educational works.

Nominations are active for up three years.

Nomination & Selection Process

The nomination must include:

• A letter evaluating the nominee’s qualifications and how the nominee has gone above and beyond in meeting one or more of the three criteria above should be no more than 5,000 characters.

In addition, the nomination should include:

• A biographical sketch.
• A list of the most important publications.
• At least two, but not more than four, seconding letters.
• Up to five reprints or preprints.

To start a new or update a continuing nomination, please see the Prize & Award Nomination Guidelines.

Deadline: Usually June 1

FOEP Nominations for APS Fellows

What

APS Fellowship constitutes recognition by one’s professional peers of exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise. Only a small fraction of the APS members reach the level of fellows and therefore this is an important recognition.

Who

Only APS members who are members of FOEP can be nominated for fellowship through FOEP. The deadline for Fellowship nominations is usually in May. We strive to have a diverse group of nominees and encourage the nomination of members of all underrepresented groups.

How

Nomination is done entirely on-line. Complete instructions for the nomination are available at: http://www.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/nominations.cfm.

The process consists of providing the nominee’s contact and professional information, uploading nomination letters documenting the accomplishments of the nominee, and explaining why he or she is deserving of recognition. Note that it is the responsibility of the nominators to provide a compact however complete nomination.

Evaluation

Nominations are evaluated by the FOEP nomination committee, reviewed by the full APS Fellowship Committee, and finally submitted for approval to the APS Council.

Subject

Outreach is a broad enterprise, spanning academia, industry, and national laboratories, as well as freelance professionals such as writers, journalists, and bloggers. Outreach activities are often overlooked and undervalued. Thus it is important to think about and propose people who have an exceptional track record in this area.

Why

Nominating someone for APS fellowship takes time; however, it is a great way to emphasize the importance of reaching out to and engaging with the public. At the personal level, it is very satisfactory to get the recognition of your peers.

Contributed by Ivan K. Schuller

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FOEP News (Meetings)

FOEP at the March and April Meetings 2022

FOEP sponsored sessions at the March Meeting

Workshop: Sunday March 13, 1:00pm – 4:00pm CDT

Communicating the excitement of science is a specialized skill and key to generating public support for science. This course is geared towards scientists who want to learn how to best engage an audience, targeting effective approaches to presenting scientific discovery and fundamentals. Taught by Fermilab’s Head of Education and Public Engagement, this communications “bootcamp” will look at topcis such as choosing an audience, choosing a communication metho, reviewing research in best practices in science communications, and chances to gain practical experience. See registration details at: https://march.aps.org/registration

Contributed Session:  Outreach, Policy, Education and History
March 16, 2022 11:30AM CDT, Room: TBD
Further details were not available at the time of this publication. Please see the APS conference site for details.

Invited Session: Only Connect-Engaging People Where They're At
Wednesday, March 16, 2022 3PM CDT  Room: W-375A

3:00PM – 3:36PM  SciComm is for Everyone, Nicole S. Sharp

3:36PM – 4:12PM  Quantum Computations, Abraham Asfaw

4:12PM – 4:48PM  Quantum Atlas, Emily Edwards

4:48PM – 5:24PM  Outreach, Kathy DrinkInWater

5:24PM – 6:00PM  Art and Science, Lindsay Olson

Co-sponsored events: The Physics of NASCAR by Diandra Leslie Pelecky, Songs about Science by Nancy Ellen Abram, and a Friday evening outreach event to a local high school, Physics Fiesta.

Have some fun at LabEscape – a quantum based escape room.

If you are attending the March meeting in person, sign up for the escape room which will be offered Saturday afternoon, March 12 through Friday morning, March 18, Room:W-177 McCormick Place

World-renowned quantum physicist Professor Alberta Pauline Schrödenberg is quarantining with COVID and desperately needs your help — the fate and security of the entire world (and more importantly, her funding!) hang in the balance. You'll have to search her lab, solve mind-blowing puzzles to reveal clues, and hopefully find a way to complete your mission! As featured in The New York Times, this APS- and NSF-funded outreach project is, we believe, the world’s first science-based 'escape-room', in which all the puzzles involve various physics phenomena. Our goal is to show that science can be useful and accessible (no prior background is assumed), as well as beautiful and fun!

We recommend teams of four to seven people; we will help you by adding other solo agents until the roster is complete, with a minimum of three people required. Total mission duration (including briefing and debriefing) will be 60 minutes.Come see for yourself why LabEscape had 98% 5-star rating, was described as "hands down the best escape room I've ever done!”, and ‘sold out’ at the 2019 APS March meeting in Boston (so your best bet is to assemble a team now)!  https://labescape.org/aps2022/

Details are still being worked on for the April meeting, but we do know the following:

Invited Session: Public Outreach in Formal and Informal Settings
Date: Saturday, April 9, 2022
Time: 10:45-12:33pm EDT
Sponsor: FOEP

• Speaker: Stephon Alexander 
• Speaker: Matthew Caplan 
• Speaker: Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz

Invited Session: Outreach in Formal Settings
Date: Monday, April 11, 2022
Time: 1:30-3:18pm EDT
Sponsors: FOEP, FeD

• Speaker: Chris Bormann
• Speaker: Deborah Roudebush
• Speaker: Shane Wood

Contributed Session: (being finalized at time of publication)
Sponsors: FOEP, FDI

FOEP Business meeting is open to all. We were hoping to have an in-person meeting at a local venue in Chicago during the March meeting, but the pandemic….  Look for future details about a virtual business meeting at the April meeting. Join in for some fun, networking, and ideas. Get to now your fellow members and the FOEP Executive Committee.

Double your exposure by giving an outreach talk in addition to your science talk!

The Forum for Outreach and Engaging the Public will have contributed talk sessions at the March and April meetings. Importantly, these talks do not count toward the APS limit of one first author presentation per meeting, so you can still submit a scientific presentation. We look forward to hearing about your work!

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Outreach Resources & Websites

Outreach Info & Resources

APS Physics Central has an “Outreach Guide!”

The guide provides ideas, opportunities, and information on how to conduct various types of outreach. Check it out! https://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/guide/

And within this guide you’ll find information about:

Outreach Ideas

• Physics on the Road
• Public Lectures - One Time
• Public Lectures - Series
• Open Houses
• Science Cafes
• Demo Shows (on-campus)
• Working with a Museum

Outreach Tips

• Public Relations
• Working with Children and Schools

Demos List,  Experts

Science Outreach Resources: https://www.science.org/content/article/science-outreach-resources

The Institute of Physics has a website devoted to Public Engagement: This website provides ideas for outreach activities, how to run an event, evaluation of an event or activity, as well as sign-ups for events (in the UK). http://www.iop.org/activity/outreach/index.html

IOPs Resources for Public Engagement: https://www.iop.org/physics-community/resources-public-engagement

White paper concerning informal science education and career advancement: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.10623

Websites that Engage and Inform the Public

Fun Size Physics:  https://funsizephysics.com/

Minute Physics:  https://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics

Veritasium:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6wuh0NRG1s

Seeker:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzWQYUVCpZqtN93H8RR44Qw

Sixty Symbols:  https://sixtysymbols.com/

Particle Adventure: https://particleadventure.org/

APS Physics Central: https://www.physicscentral.com

Optica’s Optics for Kids website:  https://www.optics4kids.org

PBS Physics in Motion:  https://www.pbs.org/show/physics-motion/

PBS Space Time: https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime/featured

NASA Outreach, see links within:  https://www.nasa.gov/open/public-affairs-web.html

Cern: https://home.cern/about

University of Canterbury: https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/science/outreach/

University of Illinois Physics Outreach: https://www.physics.illinois.edu.outreach

Virginia Tech Physics Outreach: https://www.phys.vt.edu/outreach.html

Texas A&M University Physics Outreach: https://physics.tamu.edu/outreach/

University of California at Santa Barbara Physics Circus: https://circus.physics.ucsb.edu

General Atomics Outreach: https://www.ga.com/education-outreach-programs

Oxford Physics Outreach: https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/category/categories/public-outreach

Oxford Physics Engage: https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/engage

Let FOEP Post Your Outreach Link

Do you have a favorite web site, web article, and or video you like, or perhaps your own outreach website? Send it to us for consideration of inclusion on this page so everyone can enjoy it. Send ideas to: FOEPAPSnewsletter@gmail.com

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Funding Information

APS Innovation Fund

This American Physical Society award provides funding to advance collaborative projects that support the APS mission "to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics for the benefit of humanity, promote physics, and serve the broader physics community."
https://www.aps.org/programs/innovation/fund/

Marsh W. White Awards
Awards are made to Society of Physics Students Chapters "to support projects designed to promote interest in physics among students and the general public.”
https://www.spsnational.org/awards/marsh-white

SPIE education and outreach grants for photonics and optics
As part of its education outreach mission, SPIE provides support for optics and photonics related education outreach projects.
https://spie.org/education/education-outreach-resources/outreach-grants?SSO=1

AAPT – American Association of Physics Teachers
Bauder Fund Grants for Physics Outreach Programs
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation offers grants toward promoting science and science understanding to the general public.
https://sloan.org/grants/apply

IOP Institute of Physics
Public Engagement Grants – open to all but only for projects that take place within the UK and Ireland
https://www.iop.org/about/support-grants/iop-ireland-outreach-grants
https://www.iop.org/about/support-grants/public-engagement-grant-scheme

EPS European Physical Society
Two grants that can fall into the outreach category are the EPS grant for Regional Physical Society Meetings that include items outside their usual grant categories, and EPS Award for Pre-University International Physics Competitions.
http://www.eps.org/?page=support_grants

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Physics Outreach & Engagement is a non-peer-reviewed newsletter of the Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public, a forum of the American Physical Society. It provides information and news related to the Forum and provides a medium for Forum members to exchange ideas. Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum. If you would like to submit an article, commentary, letter, review, or contact us about another issue, please email the editor, FOEPAPSnewsletter@gmail.com

The Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public can be found on the web at http://www.aps.org/units/foep/index.cfm