The WashU Physics Department is excited to invite the public to our Saturday Science series, an engaging and interactive set of lectures designed to spark curiosity and explore the wonders of science. Whether you're a science enthusiast or simply looking for a fun and educational activity, these events offer a hands-on way to dive into the world of physics.

Spring 2026: Predicting the Unpredictable

Worm Regeneration and Reproduction: A Story in Several Segments
Saturday, February 7 | Duygu Özpolat

Segmented worms (or Annelids) have amazing abilities to regrow their lost body parts; a phenomenon called regeneration. When cut into small pieces, many worms can regrow new heads (including a new brain!) and new tails from the small pieces, eventually each piece becoming a new individual. As humans, we have so much to learn about regeneration from these organisms. What kind of cells, genes, processes are involved? How can we visualize regeneration as it is happening? Dr. Özpolat will provide an overview of the wondrous things these creepy crawlies can do, and discuss how her lab is studying them to understand the mechanisms of regeneration. To find out more about her lab’s research (as well as her Science Art), you can visit her website at http://ozpolatlab.org

Probability in Quantum Mechanics: From Stern-Gerlach, to Antenna Polarizations, to Quantum Qubits
Saturday, February 14 | Joe Zehnle

From mostly pictures and only a few sparse equations, we will take a journey down a road that connects these diverse topics and show how they relate. With interactive demos at the end, we will see how one controls (tunes) the knobs in experiments. With practicality in mind, we will see how these ideas are mathematically similar (identical!) to the antennas you use in your home with your radios, TVs and cell phones.

Surprises in the Math of Bouncing and Rolling: Finding Stability Where Randomness and Chaos is Expected
Saturday, February 21 | Renato Feres

The highly bouncy Wham-O Superball toy was a national craze around the mid 1960's. This highly elastic rough ball has a number of odd properties. For example, it returns to hand after being thrown under a table and bouncing against the table underside. In this conversation, we will play with the ideal (mathematical) superball, explore some of its bizarre properties, and use it to reflect on the notions of chaos and stability in mechanical systems. Along the way, we will see connections with other curious effects such as rim-out in basketball and golf lip-out, and observe how we can gain insight into superball mechanics by stepping out into the fourth dimension. 

mosAIcs & brAIns: engaging mosaics emerging from art, aesthetics, and AI
Saturday, February 28 | Ralf Wessel

Can science predict human engagement with art? Can such predictive insight, combined with established principles of artistic design, be used to generate engaging artworks from the emergent properties of artificial intelligence? In this talk, I present how these questions inform the individualized design of both Byzantine and contemporary mosaic art. Drawing on concepts from aesthetics, art design, and AI, I explore how computational models of perception and engagement can be integrated with historical mosaic traditions to create emergent artworks that resonate with viewers at multiple perceptual and cognitive levels.