Between the yellow school buses of the Ithaca City School District and the bright blue buses of the TCAT, there are countless colorful buses in Ithaca — but only one is purple.
On the road since 2014, the Ithaca Physics Bus is a mobile classroom that educates people of all ages in the Ithaca community about physical phenomena through quirky and interactive exhibits.
In February 2024, the bus traveled to Colorado for an open house at the Little Shop of Physics, a physics learning and outreach center at Colorado State University, joining several other organizations focused on science education and communication.
“The current way we engage with physics is too often with words and symbols,” said Erik Herman, co-director of Free Science Inc., which is the non-profit organization that owns the bus. “Building intuition is more important than the words that describe a phenomenon.”
Herman’s co-director, Liv Vincent, echoed this idea, noting the distinction between different branches of science.
“The first association with biology for kids is through animals, whereas for physics it’s through an old man in a classroom describing the Bernoulli effect,” Vincent said. “Through the Physics Bus, [kids] have a more positive first association, which makes them willing to learn and explore more.”
From demonstrations on electricity and magnetism to experiments exploring motion and energy, each exhibit on the bus communicates physics in a fun and interactive way. Most of the exhibits are made from upcycled appliances or recycled materials that can be found in most households, such as cardboard, paper cups, batteries or old electronics. These practices keep costs low for the bus and for kids trying to build an experiment on their own.
One of the exhibits, made by Dekwan Perry, an exhibit specialist, shows how one can levitate a bead of Styrofoam mid-air against gravity using pressure from standing sound waves. A standing wave is a pattern of oscillation that remains stationary in space. Within this wave, there are points of minimal displacement called nodes where the beads levitate. Kids can engage with the exhibit by finding the node where beads can sit.
Another exhibit involves a falling magnet inside a metallic tube. The magnet induces an electrical current in the tube, which in turn induces a magnetic field that opposes the magnet. These forces make the magnet fall as if it was in a dense honey-like fluid.
The Physics Bus brings these exhibits to local elementary schools, fairs, universities and other outreach centers. Kids can play with the exhibits on the bus and interact with volunteers who guide them through the science behind the exhibit.
“Information doesn’t have to come from the volunteer directly,” Vincent said. “For instance, instead of saying that an exhibit works with a magnet, we can let kids go on a journey to figure it out themselves by bringing another magnet closer.”
On the Colorado trip, volunteers also helped kids build model helicopters and gliders using simple items like plywood, rubber bands, paper and foam. Using postcards to guide the glider, kids also explored how air currents affected its path.
“My goal as a volunteer is to keep the magic of science alive for the kids so when they get to more advanced stages of scientific education, they don’t think science is boring and have something to look back on,” said Audrey Lyons ’25, who accompanied the bus to Colorado.
When not on the road, the bus parks at the Free Science Workshop, located in Fall Creek. Also owned by Free Science Inc., the workshop is a well-equipped space where kids can access tools, materials and instruction to build their own exhibit. They can either participate in day-long activities like taking apart a strip of LED lights or join long-term projects over several days like building a cat tree for their pet.
Science at the workshop is not limited to just physics. Kids can hold a ball python or play with the pet rabbit. Furthermore, there are microscopes for looking at skin cells and fossils and skeletons of various animals.
The Einhorn Center For Community Engagement at Cornell has also supported the bus in its endeavors. Through their engaged curriculum grants, they introduced PHYS 4500: Cultivating Public Engagement in Physics, which was a class taught by Herman where students created outreach exhibits to showcase physical phenomena. Some of these exhibits are also featured on the bus. The class was discontinued in 2023.
For one of its upcoming events, the bus will travel to South Dakota and visit the Pine Ridge Reservation and Red Cloud high schools, where students will be given blueprints to build exhibits similar to the ones on the bus.
Raghav Chaturvedi can be reached at [email protected].