The Texas A&M physics and astronomy department recently announced the lineup for their 2025 Physics and Engineering Festival. The festival will take place on April 5 from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Mitchell Physics Building and Mitchell Institute. The event will be free and open to the public.
The festival will host a variety of guest speakers, lecturers and interactive experiences for both children and adults. Below is the current list of speakers and main events.
- “The call from Stockholm: Nobel laureates‘ first reactions” presented by Adam Smith, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Nobel Prize Outreach.
- “Hands-On Science Demonstrations,” an interactive science exhibition for children of all ages.
- “Science Circus,” a comedic presentation on Newtonian physics by artist and entertainer Rhys Thomas
- “Aggie in Space” presented by Col. Michael E. Fossum ‘80, USAFR (Ret.), NASA Astronaut, COO and Executive Professor at A&M Galveston, Vice President of A&M and Superintendent of A&M Maritime Academy.
- “Grand Finale Depth Charge Explosion,” a controlled explosion of over 1,000 plastic balls into the air.
- “The Mystery of Dark Matter in the Universe,” presented by Katherine Freese, Ph.D., professor at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the Weinberg Institute and Texas Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
In addition to the main events, the festival will host three special bonus events.
- “Low Temperature Extravaganza,” a demonstration of how air behaves at supercooled temperatures.
- “Big Barrel Implosion,” a demonstration of atmospheric pressure crushing a large barrel.
- “Large Hadron Collider Virtual Tour,” a virtual tour of the world’s largest and highest-energy particle collider at the European research institute CERN.
The current schedule is tentative and subject to change. Visitors can follow the festival on social media to receive updates as they are announced at physicsfestival.tamu.edu.
