Angelo State Physics Peer Pressure Team: Road Tour 2009

The Angelo State University Society of Physics Students chapter has a strong history of science outreach to the local community. For the fourth year, the outreach team has undertaken a week-long trip visiting middle school teachers and children and presenting physics demonstrations on a round trip of over 900 miles. The goal of the outreach program is to informally educate and excite students about physics and science in general. The demonstrations vary from simple hands on activities to more complicated experiments that most public school science teachers do not have resources to present. Each presentation engages undergraduate student volunteers in explaining underlying physical principles. A new assessment feature was added to the demonstration program to gauge the effectiveness of the program in changing attitudes about science. The results have been overwhelming as the subsequent requests for further visits are too numerous for us to accommodate.