Sue Barman, professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and president of the American Physiological Society, said the annual PhUn Week, beginning Nov. 5, hopes to reach 11,000 kids in K-12 schools across the country.

“The American Physiological Society is very interested in making sure that young kids understand physiology,” Barman said. “Teaching them at a young age about what physiology is about will hopefully encourage them to stay interested and perhaps become the next generation of physiologists leading that discipline of science across the country.”

The more than 50 volunteers were students, mostly from the MSU Physiology Society, and faculty and staff in the Department of Physiology, Dr. Erica Wehrwein, assistant professor of physiology in the Department of Physiology and lead organizer of PhUn Day, said.

Participants visited stations run and built by the students with different physiology-related activities, starting from cells all the way to the whole human body system. Some stations also looked at animal physiology, and another allowed the kids to be the doctor.

Alumnus Jimmy Poteracki helped with the station where the kids extracted DNA from strawberries using household items.

“(The kids) really seem to like being hands on,” Poteracki said. “I love teaching little kids science. It’s really exciting to see young minds really curious.”

Lindsey Degi, physiology senior and president of the Physiology Society, said she was part of the vision station, where she taught children about the blind spot in their eyes, showed them optical illusion pictures, such as a young girl’s face against an old woman’s face, and showed the pupillary reflex, where the kids shined a light in her eye and saw the pupil shrink.

“(The kids are) liking the optical illusion photos, but when we start to explain more about the physiology of it, they’re kind of running away, but I can understand that; they’re still young,” Degi said.

Degi said the parents also were interacting and enjoying the stations.

“I actually enjoy seeing the parents interact with the children, ask questions and be involved with … every single physiology aspect,” Degi said. “They really are getting their kids engaged into science, and I think that’s really exciting, and I’ve had a lot of fun today.”

Wehrwein said there were about 250 attendees as of noon on Saturday, and they were expecting about 600. She said the mission of the event was to get people to understand the human body, and that physiology means: “How does your body work?”

“People don’t often use the word ‘physiology’ when they’re talking about the human body,” Wehrwein said. “One of the things we’re interested in is just taking that name ‘physiology’ to things that people are inherently (aware of): How does your heart work? How do your lungs work? How do your eyes work?”

Poteracki said he enjoyed volunteering at PhUn Day even through some difficulties with his experiment.

“Science doesn’t always work, and you learn that real quick when you do experiments and you’re troubleshooting on the fly,” Poteracki said. “It’s a lot of fun, (and) science is great.”