Interested? Intrigued? Ready to Learn? If so, then one of the advertisements written or videotaped by the participants in the "Pop Physics" symposium today at the 2004 AAAS (Triple-A-S) Annual Meeting may hook you on physics.

The educators and authors tackle audiences with the physics of football, catch students in analyses of a Spider Man's web and entrance readers with novels infused with science all in the name of sharing physics with the world.

During home games, the football stadium at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln transforms into the third-largest city in the state and the largest physics classroom in the world. Giant television screens show tackling, kicking and punting while physics professor Timothy Gay introduces the crowd to such physics wonders as Newton's Laws of Motion.

"Football fans love to see big hits," said Gay, who uses the physical nature of football to tackle public fear of physics.

Gay also writes and appears in television programs that familiarize viewers from around the world with the game of American football. He is one of the "pop physics" experts appearing at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting.

Chemical physicist and author Catherine Asaro injects physics into games of the heart that are played out on the field of fiction. Asaro structured a relationship-oriented, romance novel around quantum physics, for example. With more time than can be allotted to football-halftime shows, she draws her readers into plots lined with science.

"Readers are more willing to embrace science if the science impacts the character," Asaro said.

"People don't usually write about both the emotions tied to love and the intellectual details of science," Asaro explained. "It'
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Contact: Monica Amarelo
mamarelo@aaas.org
206 -774-6330
American Association for the Advancement of Science
15-Feb-2004