The Little Shop of Physics Traveling Science Experience brings hands-on science to many schools in Colorado each year. In addition to schools, we’ve also worked with community groups, universities, and anyone else who would benefit from our interactive experiments. During each visit, we like to see as many students as the time and scheduling allows. Our projects are designed to be accessible to children as young as preschoolers, while still sparking the curiosity of older students and adults. Our projects expose participants to a wide range of scientific phenomena, using everyday objects to demonstrate how science is all around us. By working with materials that are familiar and easily accessible, we aim to make science feel tangible and approachable. Our goal is to show students something they’ve never seen before, inspire their curiosity, and help them realize that science is something anyone can do, anywhere, with anything.
Hosting a Traveling Science Experience Visit
The key to coordinating a successful school visit is having an enthusiastic contact at your school who is willing to host us. This person is usually a teacher or administrator. Their role is essential in helping us reserve a room, arrange a schedule, secure tables, and handle other logistical needs for the visit.
Traveling Science Experience Visit Details
Once we have a visit scheduled, we will coordinate with you. But our needs are pretty simple, really. To make it all go, we need:
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A Contact Person or Persons
Someone at the school who coordinates the logistical details below.
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A Room
The type of room we can set up in is flexible; we have used classrooms, labs, gyms and other spaces. However, there must be access to a couple electrical outlets.
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Tables or Desks
We need surfaces to set up our experiments. Many different configurations will work: rectangular tables, student desks, round tables or countertops. We typically use ~12 tables for all of our experiments.
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A Schedule
The schedule should include times, the grade level and the number of students that will be visiting during each rotation. We typically see groups of 20-40 students for ~30 minutes at a time. We also ask that you provide our crew with a lunch break in the schedule.
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Supervision
We ask that teachers remain with their classes to help supervise.
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No-Photo Students
We will ask teachers to identify which students are “no-photo” kids; and refrain from taking pictures that include these students, so that they won’t end up in our social media posts. It is helpful for teachers to gather a list of their known “no-photo” students in advance, so it’s not a scramble to find that information the day of our visit!
School Visit Overview Video
This video provides a good feel for what is involved in a Little Shop of Physics Traveling Science Experience visit.
Request Traveling Science Experience
Our 2024-2025 tour is full. We receive hundreds of requests for school visits and are unfortunately only able to visit a handful of schools. If you are able to visit Colorado State University, we are happy to host classes and other groups in our on-campus Engagement Spaces. Please complete this form to request a visit!
You may also complete this form to request a visit to your school. But please know that our capacity to visit schools is extremely limited and a school visit is unlikely.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at littleshopofphysics@gmail.com
What Does It Cost?
Little Shop of Physics is based out of Colorado State University and is funded through grants and donations. There is no formal charge for our program. However, donations are always appreciated. It costs on average approximately $2,000 for us to develop and maintain our unique program and visit a school, but we appreciate any donations regardless of the amount. Please see our How to Help page for more information on making a donation.
