Session C17: Creative Ways to Outreach and Engage the Public

A highly acclaimed planetarium show by physicists has been seen by two million people worldwide

Our planetarium show about Dark Matter called: Phantom of the Universe has been seen worldwide by over two million people. It has been in more than 800 planetariums in 75 countries and in 27 languages. Production was done by an international collaboration, which went to planetariums in several countries to view the work in progress. The show covers dark matter from the Big Bang to galaxies to a deep underground experiment to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It was quite interesting to work for a day with Academy Award-winning actor Tilda Swinton while recording the narration. Another two days was working on sound with an Academy Award-winning team at Skywalker Sound. Much of the show is in technical animation. Our target audiences were students and the public. For most planetariums, school visits account for about half their audiences. We found that many planetariums had a great interest in a dark matter show. They present our show for months at a time (unlike feature films). Planetariums have the perfect science-interested audience for us in the general public and K-12 students. We never imagined such success as we developed the show.   

Religious education as a platform for physics outreach

The incompatibility between science and religion is held by only a small fraction of religious faiths. For everyone else, studying nature is a way to marvel in God's creation. In this presentation, I outline opportunities for physics outreach and engagement of religious communities and describe my own experience with faith and physics outreach. I also discuss the landscape of existing resources for religious physicists to engage in outreach to these communities.   

Particle Physics and Cake

A novel approach to science communication is presented, using cake to explain particle physics ideas to engage new audiences. This talk will present a public engagement strategy where baking has been used to engage the general public, both at in-person events and with online platforms such as social media and virtual science fairs. This innovative approach using the juxtaposition of cake and physics makes for a fun and memorable experience, and has been demonstrated to engage new and low science capital audiences and spark their interest in particle physics.