The Physics Petting Zoo is a collection of over two dozen stations, where people can meet physics as a hands-on experience.   You can see it yourself at https://www.pa.uky.edu/sciworks/physicspettingzoo/.

The first Physics Petting Zoo occurred some 25 years ago, when the Dean at the time thought it would be a good idea to have events on campus in the afternoon before an evening football game.  The Department of Physics & Astronomy considered having a “Physics Spectacular” – a lecture showing all our favorite demonstrations – but the audience was going to come at various times without any schedule. So it was decided to lay out the demonstrations in a lab room, and let people play with them independently. This was extremely successful.

“The great thing about a hands-on event is that people of different knowledge levels learn different things,” says Professor Straley. “Children will meet something they hadn’t noticed; physics professors find out that the laws of physics actually work.”

Thereafter, Joe Straley and Sally Shafer started assembling a dedicated suite of materials. The ones that really work, relatively indestructible, and which are reasonably easy to duplicate became a box of some 25 stations. Over the years, over 100 copies have been made of the box and distributed to schools, libraries, and 4H instructors, and The Physics Petting Zoo has been visiting schools and science fairs for 20 years. 

Before the pandemic, the Zoo went to over a dozen events a year. “Hands-on” went out of fashion for a while, but we’re beginning to receive requests. 

The Department of Physics and Astronomy still has several copies of the Zoo. Occasionally one gets checked out by a school teacher. Various departmental faculty (Professors Crawford,  Ng,  Su) and members of the SPS take them places. Professor Ng observes, “The Zoo is nearly self-operating; once I’ve set it up, about all I have to do is pick up things that fall on the floor.”