Community and Outreach
Food Science
Our “Kitchen Science” project engages marginalized communities in scientific discovery. We are based in Philadelphia, where over 70% of students in the School District are from underrecognized backgrounds, with limited access to research.
But the kitchen is full of unexplored phenomena, inspiring new discoveries daily. You don’t need a laboratory or expensive equipment, just some ingredients that are readily available. Therefore, our motto is “Science is everywhere, so it should be for everyone”.
We organize outreach events at local schools, lab visits, food science seminars, and popular science talks around the world.
Free downloads of our articles, lesson plans, student hand-outs, and shopping lists for the required ingredients can be found below!
High School Workshops
Download Food Science Outreach Materials
Kitchen Science Seminars
Our kitchen seminars focus on families with children, high schoolers and undergraduates.
For this audience, we hope to ignite a spark, to get people captivated with science for the first time.
Public Science Talks
We presented this talk over 10 times at major venues including Xfinity Live! Philadelphia for the Philabundance “Camp Out for Hunger“, the nation’s largest single location food drive. For the 26th year in a row, Philabundance is joining forces with WMMR’s Preston & Steve to CAN hunger for good and to provide healthy meals to communities facing food insecurity in the Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey regions during the holiday season.
Special Issue about “Kitchen Flows” in Physics of Fluids
In this Special Issue, we celebrate the connection between the physics of fluids, food science, and education. We received over 30 articles concerning all types of kitchen flows, from simple to complex, from small to large scale. They include research articles, short reviews, educational articles, methods papers, and expert tutorials. These works highlight exciting new opportunities in this effervescently growing branch of science. Some examples are shown below.
Conference Outreach Workshops
We organized a special “Culinary Fluid Mechanics” outreach workshop at the 76th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics in Washington DC, from 19-21 November 2023. We worked in the great exhibit hall, for more than 3500 people. We showed them how to make their own lava lamp using only simple kitchen ingredients. Here is the recipe: In a small container, first add a thin layer of baking soda. Then add olive oil, until about 50% of the container. Finally, add a few droplets of vinegar mixed with food colour. Do not close the lid!
Women in Physics
![Group Photo](https://web.sas.upenn.edu/mathijssen-lab/files/2024/03/Group-Photo-ad363ff749bbc0c4.jpg)
We organized the conference for undergraduate women in physics (APS CUWiP) on January 19-21, 2024. For three days, around 180 students came together from 5 US states. They were welcomed by ~70 speakers and volunteers at the David Rittenhouse Laboratory. The program offered 4 plenary talks, 17 workshops and panel discussions, ~70 undergraduate research posters, and a career fair with booths from ~20 universities and companies. We are thankful to the conference chairs, Arnold Mathijssen, Evelyn Thomson, Cullen Blake, and Phil Nelson. They played critical roles in initiating and leading this effort, and they did an amazing job managing the event despite severe weather constraints and the Penn closure. Thanks, also, to our other department faculty, administrators, and all the volunteers who helped out this weekend. This event sets a shining example for enhancing diversity and inclusion at Penn, especially for women in physics.