Growing a Physics Outreach Initiative After COVID

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Adelphi University’s Physics Department and Physics Club rapidly accelerated our physics outreach efforts aimed at high school students. This program provides exposure to age-appropriate investigations of physics phenomena to drive students’ interest in STEM at a critical time when hands-on learning was scarce. We developed a flexible outreach kit/plan that enabled seamless transition between remote and in-person programming as COVID-19 restrictions shifted. The total cost to run this event was approximately $7 per student. Financial support from the Society of Physics Students and the low cost of these kits allowed us to donate the experimental equipment to students, promoting further learning at home. The frequent changes to mask requirements and visitation policies at our university and partnering high schools added an array of challenges. In total, we collaborated with approximately 3 schools during the 2020-2021 school year, 10 schools from 2021-2022, and currently have more than 10 scheduled for 2022-2023. The types of activities we did varied from school to school which included construction of DC motors, optics investigations including diffraction glasses, and using a diffusion cloud chamber to track the paths of highly energic particles.