The Central Michigan University chapter of the Society of Physics Students has been active off and on for many years. Our mission is to not only get together as a group and form close friendships among the physics students of CMU, but to also learn as much as we can about the different areas of physics and then utilize methods with which we can spread this knowledge in ways that make it interesting. Physics has a notorious reputation for being somewhat of a tedious subject (and yeah, some of that's true), so we try to find the lighter elements of the field. Every other week SPS holds meetings in Dow 201 at 5:30 p.m., with fliers posted for anyone who is interested. The meetings are generally devoted to pizza (free, courtesy of the department) and discussion of projects, programs, and field trips that we could do to make SPS fun to the members and interactive with other groups of people, although we do other things as well. All meetings have pizza and pop and are open to anyone who is interested, not just registered members.

Another activity that we have been participating in is what is called a lab crawl. We arrange with one of the professors not just in the physics department but in other departments that may be doing research in a physics-related project for a time during which we as a group can go and tour their lab. The professor shows us his or her project, explains what the goal is along with necessary background information, and sometimes even gives demonstrations. This not only gets us exposed to what today's physicists are researching, but also gives us an idea of the kind of equipment we may be using in the future, as well as the amount of time preparing for experiments and researching the subject thoroughly beforehand to produce accurate and meaningful results.

The field trips we've been on consist of various science-related institutes around the Great Lakes region:

• We visited the Cyclotron Laboratory at the campus of Michigan State University. The cyclotron was running at the time we were there, but we got a great tour of the rest of the facility. It was quite interesting and informative.
• We also went to Fermi Laboratory near Chicago. That was a great trip, where they gave us a tour of the place and showed us the various labs around the particle accelerator, as well as some of the major results stemming from the research done there.
• Argonne National Laboratory was another place we visited on our trip to the Chicago area. There they showed us the equipment they had set up and even let us see the neutrino detector they were building.
• We went out to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to the Zone 7 Meeting at Carnegie Mellon University. There was a speaker there from Los Alamos that had been on the team that solved the missing neutrino problem. His talk was quite interesting, and also quite technical. But it was a great time.
• Several of us took a road trip out to the Midland Center for the Arts to view a special display they had set up there concerning the universe as we know it today. It contained the most up-to-date information about the universe now and in the beginning, hands-on activities for learning, and striking images from the Hubble Space Telescope. It was amazing! Then we went to Bay City to see the program at the planetarium which provided more information about the universe and what it's made of, as well as a view of the current night sky and events that will be occurring during the summer, all in IMAX format!
• Three of us went to Michigan State University for an American Physics Society conference on quantum computing. There, physicists presented their latest research on quantum mechanics and its application to designing a quantum computer. While some of it was over our heads, the speakers did a good job breaking it down into terms that students could understand. Overall, it was a very interesting conference!
• 4 of us went down to Toledo, Ohio for the zone 7 meeting, held at the University of Toledo. Clouds killed an astronomical observing show they had planned for the first night, but the next day we attended a roundtable discussion among a number of the SPS chapters in the zone regarding such topics as recruitment, fundraising, and involvement/activites. Then there were several research presentations, both by students and a faculty member, and the day ended with a huge lab crawl through 3 or 4 different research laboratories in the science building.
• We returned to the Bay City planetarium for a special show about the Cassini mission. This is a mission where a special satellite has been sent to Saturn and is currently in orbit around the planet, studying its rings and moons. The show gave a background of our knowledge of the Saturnian system as well as what the Cassini craft can do in increasing our knowledge.
• Our entire group went down to Michigan State again to tour the Cyclotron laboratory because it had been shut down for maintanance, so it was an ideal time to actually see the beast! What a moving experience it was!

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