SPS on a roll with a year of “year-of"s

The Society of Physics Students (SPS) and Sigma Pi Sigma are joining organizations around the country and the world in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009) and the Year of Science (YoS 2009). The SPS National Council chose A Universe of Wonder as the theme for 2009 in honor of these celebrations.

IYA 2009 commemorates the 400 years since Galileo first turned a telescope to the skies and all that we have learned in that time. To spread the sense of wonder and surprise that Galileo must have felt at seeing craters on the Moon and satellites orbiting Jupiter, SPS joins other IYA 2009 participants in their cornerstone project to help one million students build a telescope similar to Galileo’s and look out to the same objects that inspired him. Dubbed “Galileoscopes ,” these working scientific instruments will be an integral part of the 2009 SPS SOCKs (Science Outreach Catalyst Kits).

How do we know what we know? From astronomy to zoology, YoS 2009 aims to increase public understanding of the process and nature of science. SPS has collaborated with the APS and other organizations in the COPUS network (Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science) to produce experiments, stories, physicist profiles, games, videos and other content for March’s “Physics & Technology ” thematic hub on the YoS 2009 website. As part of this effort, SPS is spearheading an experiment on the science of rolling objects . Anyone can contribute data by doing a few rolling experiments and submitting the results on the YoS 2009 website.