What are some fun activities for a Society of Physics Students weekly meeting?

[jaska22]

Hi everyone

I am not sure if this is the right place for the post, so if it not please feel free to move it to the more adequate location

I am a member of my Society of Physics students national and local chapter and we have weekly meetings, where we try to do fun physics stuff/eat/discuss physics/physics news for about an hour. I know that most physics departments have these and was wondering what do you guys do at your weekly meetings, or if you are not in school what did you use to do when you were a member/in school?

We are trying to come up with new ideas always in order to keep our fairly large group motivated and interested in physics throughout the years.

Some of the things we do are weekly physics news, presentation about elected physicist of the month, physics games, food, semester trips,...

So, what do you do or did you do when you were a member

 

[ParisAsta]

I got one.. try and not have the meetings when most people have class. At my university, the SPS meetings are at a time when most people have class. I don't know if they want to keep it as a club for a few select people or what, but having the meetings in the middle of the day is not really a good thing.

I tend to stay away from the local group and pay my national membership. I figure one day I won't have a class as the same time as the meetings. I figure I'll go then.

 

[Patrick_Nth]

We had guest speakers every so often, some of who were from the Physics & Astro Dept. and some from other Depts. (like a Chem prof at our school who was talking about methane hydrate and alternative energy)

Our meetings are only once a week and they're late enough in the day to the point where it won't conflict directly with classes (6PM).

There was an attempt to build a bubble chamber this past year, but that didn't go as well as we had hoped. Here's to crossing our fingers and retrying that this year.

Aside from that, it's pretty much just like what you described with your chapter. We didn't focus too heavily on weekly physics news, although some people have requested things related to that, so I simply asked that they email me the article ahead of time to distribute to all members before the meeting(s).