by David Ferguson
Halloween arrived earlier on Wednesday night as Hudson High School students kicked off the season of costumes, candy, and trickery, with the annual Haunted Physics Lab.
Honors and advanced placement physics students, dressed as ghouls, presented a variety of interactive physics projects to the hundreds of local families, students, and teachers in attendance.
This year, the Haunted Physics lab enters its seventh year, but it wasn’t always such a big event. “When I first started here, they already had the [Haunted Physics Lab],” said Robert Van Buren, the event organizer and Hudson High School teacher. “What I wanted to do is make it bigger and bigger each year, building off the year before.”
The Haunted Physics Lab is centered around one theme – Halloween. “We have taken the idea of Halloween and applied it to a variety of projects,” said senior Johnny Petrovick. “ There is liquid nitrogen ice cream, fake blood, a pumpkin man that interacts with the kids, all projects that appeal to kids and fit the Halloween theme.”
Students from Van Buren’s advanced placement and honors physics classes create the multitude of fun, kid-friendly projects each year; providing a great opportunity for students to showcase their knowledge of physics in a fun and challenging setting.
The Haunted Physics Lab has been in the making for the past several weeks. “Planning is a difficult process,” said senior physics student Connor Roberts. “We are using a lot of projects from previous years, so we have to make repairs and add on to those projects so they work properly. We also build new machines, so there is a lot of work involved there. It has been a long run getting to this point.”
Each year the students design and create a new project that will be incorporated into the event in future years. Van Buren, a former engineer, pushes his students to create an original project. Students research a particular aspect of physics, and then they build a test, and go through the testing process, until they create a whole new project.
This year’s projects ranged from a Van de Graaff generator to a concert, performed on a theremin and guitar. “Each project is different and shows a different element of physics,” said Van Buren. “Every station is managed by students, so it allows students to master knowledge on a specific aspect of physics.”
Above all, the Haunted Physics Lab aims to create an interest in science for younger kids, by highlighting the interesting and fun projects and illusions involving science. “The event is a really great way to bring the more obscure parts of physics to the public, in an interactive and interesting way,” said Roberts.
“The lab allows an application of science to the public. Physics usually happens in these far off places, but this event allows us to bring the science to the public,” said Van Buren. The fun, kid-friendly projects are a great way to start an interest in kids from a young age, so they will possibly pursue science in school or even for a career path.
This year’s Haunted Physics Lab was an overwhelming success. A young boy leaving the Lab may have put it best: “That was the coolest science lab ever.”
