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Please note: This expert may not be available for every date of this program.
Activity note: Inn check in from 4:00 p.m.
Afternoon: Program Registration: 4:30-6:00 p.m. After you have your room assignment, come over to the Road Scholar table in the lobby to register with the program staff and get your welcome packet containing an up-to-date schedule that reflects any last-minute changes, and other important information. If your arrival is delayed, please ask for your packet when you check in.
Dinner: In hotel dining room, choose what you like from the dinner buffet with coffee, tea, and water; other beverages available for purchase.
Evening: Orientation: The Group Leader will greet everyone with a warm welcome and lead introductions. We will review the up-to-date program schedule and any changes, discuss roles and responsibilities, logistics, safety guidelines, emergency procedures, and answer any questions you may have. Three instructors will lead lessons and field trips, each with their own style and areas of expertise. All instructional sessions will take place at Osmond Hall, which is about ½ a mile from the Inn. Transportation will be provided for those who prefer not to walk. Free time is reserved for your personal independent exploration. Please be aware that program activities, schedules, and personnel may need to change due to local circumstances. In the event of changes, we will alert you as quickly as possible. Thank you for your understanding. We’ll wrap up as our presenters provide an overview of what we will be learning including a some fun physic demonstrations!
Activity note: Penn Stater to Osmond Hall is approximately 3 miles. Getting on/off a trolley necessitating a few steps. Transportation will be provided.
Breakfast: In hotel dining room, choose what you like from the breakfast buffet.
Morning: We’ll set off on a narrated trolley ride around the Penn State campus. After arriving at Osmond Hall, we’ll get started with an orientation to illusions. We will be learning about how we trick our eyes everyday with various illusions using mirrors and other optical devices. We will investigate specific illusions and explore the ideas of angular size, parallax and virtual images. We will experiment with flat and curved mirrors to see what kind of images they make and then we will learn how to analyze optical systems by drawing the path of light rays through them.
Lunch: At the Hetzel Union Biulding (HUB), participants will be given prepaid debit cards with which to buy lunch included in the program cost. Among many other choices, the most popular option is the Soup & Garden, which offers choices from a diverse salad and hot main dish bar.
Afternoon: After returning to Osmond, we’ll have a specialist lecture given by our knowledgeable and enthusiastic instructors on lenses. This lecture will focus on lenses and we will learn about nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism. Using correcting vision tools like telescopes and magnify glasses, we will discover how lenses allow us to see better through correcting vision.
Dinner: Hotel buffet.
Evening: One of the world’s greatest artists, Leonardo Da Vinci was also a scientist and inventor. We’ll talk about the interplay between physics & the arts and see how physics principles underlie elements of sculpture, painting and music.
Activity note: Penn Stater to Osmond Hall is approximately 3 miles. Getting on/off a trolley necessitating a few steps. Transportation will be provided.
Breakfast: Hotel buffet.
Morning: At Osmond Hall with our instructors, this morning's lecture will focus on electric circuits. We’ll learn about how electric circuits work, how our houses are wired and how electric grid operates. As we build circuits, we will learn about the electric current, voltage, power and what the numbers on an electricity bill mean.
Lunch: Hotel buffet.
Afternoon: Our lecture series will continue at Osmond Hall with our instructors to continue our discussion on electricity. We’ll learn how to generate electricity and even generate some of our own electricity. We’ll explore the difference between DC power (e.g., batteries) and AC power (e.g., outlets) and go back in time to the “Battle of Currents” when Edison and Westinghouse & Tesla fought for adoption of their preferred type of electric. Then we’ll talk about how the electric grid operates to transmit electricity generated in a wind farm or power plant to our houses for us to use, and how these standards are different in different countries. We will then depart Osmond Hall for a field trip at the Palmer Art Museum on campus. The strength of the museum’s permanent collection is American art, from 18th and 19th-century landscapes to modern abstract art, but also includes European art from the 16th century onwards, Japanese woodblock prints, Jade sculptures, African sculpture, Peruvian & Asian ceramics, a Chihuly glass sculpture and a Calder mobile. We’ll wrap up our afternoon enjoying the galleries and seeing some physics at play in art.
Dinner: This meal has been excluded from the program cost and is on your own to enjoy what you like. The Group Leader will be happy to offer suggestions.
Evening: At leisure. You may wish to visit other attractions on campus and in town on your own or just relax at the inn.
Activity note: Penn Stater to Osmond Hall is approximately 3 miles. Getting on/off a trolley necessitating a few steps. Transportation will be provided. At art museum, stand and walk up to 1 hour at a time.
Breakfast: Hotel buffet.
Morning: Lecture at Osmond Hall: At the beginning of the 20th century, some physicists felt that physics was nearly done – that it had come close to solving all the important problems. Within a few years, Einstein, Bohr, de Broglie, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Planck and others completely revolutionized the world of physics with quantum mechanics. What happened in the early 20th century that revolutionized how we see the fundamental properties of the universe? What is the essence of quantum mechanics and how is it so radically different from what came before it – and how most people think the world works?
Lunch: At the Hertzel Union Building (HUB).
Afternoon: After lunch, we will have two lectures at Osmond Hall. For our first lecture, experts will lecture about radioactivity and radiation. We will discuss both of these topics and how we discovered them in the early 20th century, how we use them in our daily lives and how much we should fear them. Our second lecture will focus on detecting black holes and neutron stars. We often perceive the universe through visible light. For the last 80 years, we have probed the universe using radio waves, infra-red and even X-rays. In the last few years, we have harnessed a new tool for observing the universe- studying waves in fabric of space-time itself (gravitational waves). Penn State faculty are part of the LIGO collaboration that observed gravitational radiation from the collision of two black holes in 2015. We will hear about this discovery and the future of exploration of the universe using gravitational radiation.
Dinner: Hotel buffet.
Evening: Tonight we will see a film "Humanity needs Dreamers: A Visit with Marie Curie". This film is about Marie Curie, a two-time Nobel Prize winner who is best known for her work in the radioactivity field. Then we will have a treat at the Creamery, Penn State's well-known ice cream store.
Activity note: Penn Stater to Osmond Hall is approximately 3 miles. Getting on/off a trolley necessitating a few steps. Transportation will be provided. Walking and standing up to 1 hour at the nuclear reactor.
Breakfast: Hotel buffet.
Morning: At Osmond Hall, we’ll spend the morning exploring how toys use various physics principles to operate – and of course play with some of them, too, while we are at it! We’ll see how toy makers create fun using the concepts of levers, cams, gears, center of mass, and elastic potential energy.
Lunch: Hotel buffet.
Afternoon: After lunch, we will have our second lecture of the day focusing on the laws of physics. Newton’s Laws of physics allowed us to predict very precisely the motion of objects on earth and the planets around the sun. These laws are deterministic – in theory, knowing the current state of the world, we should be able to predict the future with them. We’ll discuss how we’ve learned that sometimes the deterministic can be unpredictable and the random predictable. Then, we will depart to the Nuclear Reactor on campus which has been vital to the university's research over the years. We will have a guided exploration of the facility and see a reactor in action.
Dinner: Hotel buffet.
Evening: At leisure.
Activity note: Hotel check out 11:00 a.m.
Breakfast: For our final meal of the program together, our professors from throughout the course will join us over the breakfast buffet.
Morning: Our last session will be a lively review at the inn following breakfast with Q&A, and wrap up with the instructors. This concludes our program. We hope you enjoy all your Road Scholar learning adventures and we look forward to having you on rewarding programs in the future. We encourage you to join our Facebook page and share photos of your program. Visit us at www.facebook.com/rsadventures. Best wishes for all your journeys!