Yale Physics hosts 2026 Pathways to Science Summer Scholars

For all of us who can see, we experience light and color every moment. But what are they? We will explore light’s visible and invisible properties, and how these properties enable technologies from lasers to smart phones. 

Develop your science communication skills through exciting hands-on physics demonstrations and creative presentations. Learn to solder and build your own tabletop physics demos—a color mixer, a weevil with eyes that light up in the dark, and an LED rainbow that converts mechanical to electric energy! Team up with other students to create fun skits that bring large-scale physics demos to life and present the show at the Pathways program closing ceremony. Plus, you’ll contribute to the Yale Physics Lecture Demonstrations repository by developing outreach materials that inspire future learners. 

Pathways students learn how Wright Lab researchers can make the invisible visible, while interacting with scientists and learning the processes of experiment, observation, and analysis. Wright Lab researchers explore the frontiers of science, investigating dark matter, neutrinos, how matter is made and interacts, quantum phenomena, the beginnings of the Universe, and more! Specific activities this year addressed wavelengths and making sound and heat visible; changing resonances and energy transfer; and particle physics using accelerators made of a rod, electromagnetic coils, and balls.

Imagine you are an experimental physicist working at the Large Hadron Collider and you are on shift in the control room, but something goes wrong! Students will learn what it is like to run these large collider experiments while having fun solving puzzles with their classmates.