So physics is phun, right? Components, constants and tricksy trig identities lend to your life hours of unequaled joy, yes? Well, here's a suggestion that could factorial-ly increase your physics-related fun - or at least allow you to score several slices of very free and therefore very tasty pizza every month: join the Society of Physics Students (henceforth lazily called the SPS)!
The SPS is in many ways analogous to all those high school clubs of which you were no doubt an all-star member. There are monthly meetings, the next of which will be October 11 (thereíll be signs all over the physics building). The SPS plans Physics is Phun shows where members take some of the demos youíll see in classes to elementary schools. The point is to get the kids interested in and excited about magic-no, wait, physics (the two are easy to confuse). The SPS also encourages its members to join National SPS, which amounts to joining the American Physical Society. For national membership there is a $20 per year fee, which the UF SPS tries to meet half way. National membership gets you such perks as subscriptions to various physics magazine (which, if nothing else, look really impressive sitting around your room), and that intangible, warm, fuzzy feeling of belonging that goes hand in hand with joining any organization. The SPS also has an umbrella honors organization called Sigma Pi Sigma, which is a nice rèsumè booster, and gets you a cool pin, pen, and card.
Now unlike many high school clubs, the UF SPS is very well funded without forcing its members to pay dues. Among other things, this means free pizza and drinks for everyone who attends meetings, as well as an SPS funded picnic at the end of the year for all interested undergraduate students, graduate students, professors, and any associated families. The SPS and the Chemistry Club used to have annual paintball fights, which have turned into SPS only affairs, undoubtedly because the chemists realized that in the realm of velocities and trajectories they were well outmatched. SPS meets its members halfway in paying for the paintball fights, and it is lots of fun, regardless of whether or not there are chemists to use as targets. Also, the SPS has its own secret club house - sort of. The SPS lounge is on the second floor of the physics building and is a great refuge for anyone looking for a quiet place to read or do homework.
More importantly than all the rest, the SPS meetings are great places to meet other physics students. Some of the best advice you'll get as a physics student will come from the students who have been there and done it, and your best chance of meeting said students is at the SPS meetings (believe it or not, physics students aren't really big on having their own, ‘physicists only' parties other than SPS). It is certainly much easier, much more fun, and much more convenient to discuss a class or a professor with a student who had it last semester than it is to try and hunt down an advisorís office hours and office. Anyways, if you're a physics major (and, since you've read this much, I'm supposing you are), or if all the above seem to you like good times, seriously consider joining the SPS!