Our 250,000th Kid!

Half a Million Hands… And Counting
On November 6, the Little Shop of Physics passed a major milestone, registering our 250,000th student taking part in a school visit.

The Little Shop has been on the road since about 1991. From a relatively slow start, visiting a few schools a year, presenting 25 experiments thrown into the back of a VW bus, the Little Shop has grown into a very active program. We have a 15 passenger van with the seats out of the back that is stuffed with 100+ experiments that we take to schools ranging from local high schools to elementary schools on native American reservations, from urban Denver middle schools to rural schools on the eastern plains with 100 students in all grades. Each year we see about 20,000 students—not including the 5,000+ folks who attend our yearly Open House.

Each of the 250,000 students we’ve seen has had about an hour of hands-on experiment time, working with equipment in an atmosphere of open-ended exploration, guided by undergraduate interns and volunteers from Colorado State. Here’s another impressive number: The Little Shop of Physics has had over 2,000 interns and volunteers over the past 18 years.

Kevin Vorse, our 250,000th student, wasn’t even born when the Little Shop started going on the road. He was very excited to be chosen, and he loved the tie-dye shirt we gave him, but he wasted little time reflecting on the historic moment. Like most students we work with, once he got in the door he was too excited to get his hands on the brightly-colored, engaging experiment laid out around the room, and he immediately got to work learning about pressure, energy, motion, electricity, magnetism and light and color.

The big question now is: What next? The answer is simple: We’ll keep going. Recently we’ve become part of the education efforts of CMMAP, the Center for Multiscale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes. The connection with a research group has been a real plus; they’ve given us great ideas, and we’ve come up with a suite of experiments we are presenting in teacher workshops called “Ten Things You Should Know about the Atmosphere.” We’ve hired a full-time teacher in residence, we’ve gotten a newer van. We are putting the finishing touches on our 16th episode of the Everyday Science television program, and we’ve got plans for the next several shows.

We’ll keep visiting schools, of course. That’s the heart of who we are and what we do. We are up to about 251,000 students now, and the undergraduate students who keep things going don't show signs of tiring. They are always up for another road trip to another school.

If you are interested in going on the road with us, we’ve always got room for one more person in the van. Help us reach the next quarter million kids!