Angelo State Society of Physics Students Road Tour 2011

For the past seven years at the end of each spring semester, the ASU Society of Physics Students has journied throughout Texas for a week long outreach to various K-12 schools. During the week long outreach effort, a variety of physics demonstrations were presented to over 1300 students, teachers and school administrators. The goal of this public engagement activity is to both encourage younger students to consider following STEM related career paths and to spark an overall interest in science. Demonstrations focused on several aspects of physics. For the 2011 Road Tour, we paid special homage to the 100th anniversary of Ernest Rutherford's postulation of his model of the atom by explaining his results and their implications in 1911. In addition to adding several new demonstrations, the tradition of having a custom laser light show for each school was continued. As always, the fan favorite ``Nitrogen Bomb'' and a new nitrogen thunder cloud were added to our grand finales. The team, consisting of two faculty advisors and eleven students, was able to leave lasting impressions in a new and exciting way across central Texas.