AAPT: American Association of Physics Teachers

Meet Bryan

"THERE'S SO MUCH SCIENCE, IT MAKES ME GO AHHH!!!" This is what a 1st grader excitedly yelled at me in a school gymnasium when I was an undergraduate.
I was unsure about what to study in college. I enjoyed many seemingly unrelated interests like science, creative writing, web design, knitting, and motorsports. One day, I scrolled through a list of every degree the nearby university, Colorado State University, offered. I latched onto electrical engineering because there was a lasers and optics concentration and I simply thought to myself, "Well lasers are cool." Two years later, after concluding that building a lightsaber was not in my near future, I realized I enjoyed my physics classes more than my engineering classes.
As an undergraduate, I joined the Little Shop of Physics (LSOP), a traveling science program that visits schools with hundreds of hands-on science experiments. I learned how to build science experiments with hot glue, duct tape, and everyday household items. I built relationships with people that I still am friends with today. My first major event with LSOP was their annual Open House, a free event on campus that regularly hosts over 10,000 people to do science! It was almost overwhelming, but so thrilling that there were so many people excited to learn and explore. It was a weird feeling because I had not even completed my second year of college. I did not feel like an expert, but there were kids and adults asking me questions as if I was one.