APS Physics: Collin Epstein ’18 on Why He Chose Physics
The American Physics Society website, Physics, quoted Davidson student Collin Epstein '18 in its coverage of PhysCon in San Francisco. A theme of the quadrennial meeting was the role of teachers in students' academic choices.
"Davidson College junior Collin Epstein remembers the day in his high school class when students had to predict the impact point of a projectile. 'It was this amazing moment to me when we actually pulled the trigger, and the ball went and landed within 1 or 2 inches of where we had predicted,' says Epstein. 'This idea that all these numbers and equations on the board were real. It was what described real life, and that was it for me.'"
There is another Davidson connection to PhysCon. The meeting is sponsored by Sigma Pi Sigma, the national physics honor society founded at Davidson College in 1922.
This year's meeting took place in California's Silicon Valley, and centered on the theme "Unifying Fields: Science Driving Innovation." Undergraduates, practicing physicists and physics alumni from a broad spectrum of career paths gathered together to address the interconnectivity of the modern world and what it means to science.