I offered a pretzel roll to NASA (Week Two)

At a lecture led by Dr. Clampin and Nobel Laureate Dr. John Mather, I couldn’t keep my hands off of these things, and with a couple minutes left before the presentation I found myself with too many rolls to finish. So I somewhat humorously approached the NASA director and offered him one; we laughed about it and then headed to the lecture.

“Sometimes we need a big enough telescope to see the important things”

That was one of the first things Dr. Mather said. Of course, he was speaking literally, discussing the possibility of building scopes and scanners that could one day identify life on other planets. But this really made me want to take a step back and look at the big picture. Look through the big telescope, per sé.

For a while now I’ve had this question in the back of my mind: “What makes people like physics?” For people who are already physicists, what was it that helped them realize this is what they want to pursue? And, perhaps more difficult to answer, for people who want nothing to do with physics, is there anything that would convince them to give it a try?

This question is the reason I joined this program as the APS Education Intern.

Whenever someone asks me what I major in and I tell them Physics, everyone always reacts the same way: “Wow I could never do that” or “You must be a genius or something” or “Physics was my least favorite class, I don’t know how you do it”. It doesn’t matter what school they went to or what level of education they have, it’s always the same. There seems to be such a stigma around physics that scares people away before they even want to give it a try.

Yet

It seems like, almost paradoxically, physics is the most popular it has ever been. YouTubers like VSauce and Veritasium, who have channels dedicated to physics, get tens of millions of viewers every week. The most popular movies and shows all seem to be about time travel and quantum physics. But the same millions who are going out of their way to consume physics content cannot seem to stand being in an actual physics classroom. What’s up with that?

It’s my job to figure that out. I’ll be working with the American Physical Society to create personas, essentially characters representing your typical student in physics. I’ll be conducting surveys and interviews with young physics students, including my fellow interns, and combine the core ideas to create 3-6 personas that can help answer questions like: how do we connect with someone who engages in physics through social media? or what are some motivations and resources for a student who loves physics but doesn’t plan on getting a graduate degree in physics? By talking with people about physics and getting to get a glimpse into their goals, their motivations, their inspirations, I feel like I can get a little closer to building my big telescope.

After the lecture, Dr. Clampin walked up to me, shook my hand, and told me it was great meeting me, before he was escorted away to do whatever a director at NASA does.

I hope he looks back one day and smiles about the kid who offered him a pretzel roll.

Bonus Goodies: