Student Presenter(s): Avarna Manoj Agarwal, Pablo Planas
Faculty Mentor: Sung Park
Department: Digital Art and Design
School/College: School of Architecture and Design, New York City

The NSF Grant wants to work towards getting younger students who are about to make decisions about their professions get interested in the different topics of Physics by creating fun and informative TikTok Videos.

Specifically on topics such as Holographic Duality, Strong Coupling, Extra Dimensions, how extra dimensions in string theory help us understand particles, what E=mc^2 means and solitons. The purpose is to take these difficult and intimidating topics, and break them down in a way that helps younger students get interested in it and want to look further into it. Like a glimpse of what to expect.

TikTok and Instagram are chosen to communicate and engage the students since that is currently the best platform to reach our target audience. These TikTok videos will have a fun element to it, while being straightforward and easy to understand. The intent is to find metaphors and comparisons in real life that lead back to the topics and help them comprehend the subject better.

The teams working on this are the Design Team and the Physics Department. We are working with Undergraduate Physics Students who are coming up with concepts and storyboards that lead to easier explanations. Then the design team is producing, directing, and editing all the videos and content to make sure it is expressing the message we want to communicate.

Creating such videos will help them figure out what field excites them, which topic they would like to look more into, and what sparks their curiosity.