'Friday the 13th' Lucky for USU Physics Day at Lagoon Participants

It’s pretty gutsy to schedule a major event, involving thousands of people, on Friday the 13th, but the second Friday in May is the traditional date for Utah State University’s Physics Day at Lagoon. It’s organizers, including USU physics professor J.R. Dennison, who was a founder of the gathering 27 years ago, have the spring party down to….yep, a science.

“Our 2016 USU Physics Day was a great success,” says Dennison, faculty member in USU’s Department of Physics. “The weather was ideal, the turn-out was tremendous and, by all accounts, everyone had a wonderful time.”

Nearly 9,000 high school and middle school students, MESA (Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement) program elementary students, along with their teachers, descended on Davis County’s über-playground for a day of science learning, competition and gut-churning fun.

Hundreds of youths competed in the day’s popular Sky Drop contest, which involved dropping a raw egg in a protective container of the competitor’s own design from the park’s Sky Ride onto an Aggie bull’s eye. (Dozens of eggs plunged to their doom, but a surprising number survived.)

Students also displayed ideas for thrilling rides of the future, vied in a robotics grudge match and measured G-forces as they zoomed through roller coaster loops. Middle and high school teams competed in an engineering challenge to design and build energy-generating windmills with a chance to advance to the national MESA USA Wind Energy Challenge.

Along with the day’s amusements, nearly 100 aspiring Aggies in three-person teams engaged in the Physics Bowl competition for scholarship awards. First place in the competition went to Albert Hanks, Tanner Niel and Chase Zaguree-Marks of Utah’s Alta High School. Jared Paskins of Utah’s Weber High School placed second and the team of Daniel Asay, Kirsten Hamilton and Andrew Howard of Utah’s Lone Peak High School captured third.

Physics Day participants, representing nearly 200 schools, traveled to Lagoon from throughout Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and Arizona.

“It’s very rewarding to see so many teens getting excited about science,” says USU Physics alum Amberly Evans Jensen ’12, MS’15, who assisted Dennison in coordinating this year’s event. “It takes nearly a year to prepare for the event, but it’s worth it.”

Idaho National Laboratory and Lagoon partner with USU in coordinating the event, which is supported by USU’s Department of Physics, USU College of Science, USU’s Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, USU Admissions, the USU Research Foundation, Space Dynamics Laboratory, Hill Air Force Base STEM Outreach, the U.S. Navy, the Utah NASA Space Grant Consortium and multiple corporate sponsors.

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