Students Showcase Exciting Tricks and Science Lessons at Spooktacular Optics

Local families gathered around the witches of “hocus pocus.” The children were excited to see the witches’ tricks, but might not have expected to learn about viscosity and sublimation in the process.

Rockhurst University’s department of physics hosted Spooktacular Optics on Thursday, Oct. 27, transforming the Rockhurst University Community Center as a hall of haunted illusions. The biennial haunted physics lab is a student-led event with two goals: to create a fun Halloween experience for the community and to show the community that physics is in everything.

Students taking the optics class in the physics department designed the different lessons displayed as their midterm projects. There were a variety of lessons on display, with shiver-inducing names like “spooktacular surgery” and “mad man’s metal monster” incorporating classroom concepts like fiber optics, surface tension and the creation of parallel circuits. All lessons were taught in fun and exciting ways that entertained children and taught scientific concepts, like the creation of rainbows and how stereoscopic vision works.

“I have seen some great projects over the years, and I always tell the current students that the bar is high — they have always made me very proud of their work,” said Nancy Donaldson, Ph.D., professor of physics.

Donaldson started this event back in 2005, with just 11 students and a goal to “have students design, create, and build a fun project that incorporated Halloween ‘spooky’ to the community, our RU students and the faculty,” she said.

The University caps its Halloween events with Safe Trick-or-Treat tonight from 6-8 p.m., inviting area children younger than 12 accompanied by an adult to the center for activities, treats and a student-created haunted house.