About 75,000 people participated in activities, watched sporting events, and took in a variety of entertainment on the College Avenue, Busch, and Cook/Douglass campuses.

Please check out photos from other visitors and contribute your own on the Rutgers Day Facebook page. You can also see photos on the Rutgers Day website.

And check out this highlight video from RU-tv:

Chemistry student Stephen Zieminski, left, helps young visitors get their hands full of glop

Ask this young Rutgers Day visitor what he knows about non-Newtonian fluids, and he’s likely to … ignore you. After all, he’s having too much fun playing in this non-Newtonian fluid. It’s a fancy name for a substance that is liquid under ordinary conditions, but squeeze or press it, and it turns into a solid. In this case, a handful of glop.

Tending to the wading pool full of this water and cornstarch mix is undergraduate chemistry student Stephen Zieminski, who is quick to give a technical explanation about what’s going on. “Cornstarch is a polymeric sugar, with lots of weak interactions between molecules,” he says. But the kids he oversees pay no heed, grabbing more and more batches of glop.

Chemistry professor John Taylor is more philosophical. “Things aren’t exactly what they seem,” he said. “It prompts you to ask questions about the nature of matter, and that’s what chemistry is all about.” If that’s the case, the kids who got their hands messy today may be on their way to becoming the curious chemists of tomorrow.

Graduate student Johann DTrinh demonstrates a physics-inspired bit of 'magic.

How do you get kids interested in physics?

A group of toga-clad physics education students in the Graduate School of Education have it down to a science.

Every Rutgers Day, they put on a physics magic show.

And kids responded Saturday by crowding around the Voorhees Mall site, paying close attention, and then shouting their approval at the end.

The show included several science-inspired, sleight-of-hand tricks – three bottles of water that seemed to defy audience expectations when they were moved around on a table; a straw that could sound like a kazoo, and a glass of water that, when turned upside down on top of a piece of paper, failed to soak the paper.

“We use different types of physics concepts to show ‘magic’ ’’ said student Dan Sierzega.  “It’s really science, but we make it very magical for the kids.”

To add a bit of drama  to the show, the students impersonated Greek and Roman deities, with each representing a specific physics concept.

Students from the Mason Gross School of the Arts donned clown garb on Rutgers Day and charmed the crowds on Voorhees Mall.

If you walked through Voorhees Mall on Rutgers Day, chances are you met up with a band of clowns who implored you to stop, stick around, and have fun.

The clowns, who danced, sang, and jumped at any opportunity to strike up a conversation, were students from the Mason Gross School of the Arts who seemed to thoroughly enjoy the opportunity to step off the stage and mingle with the people.

“First we came with a game plan to do skits, but that didn’t really work outdoors – so now we are just talking to the people walking by,” said Jasmine Carmichael, a senior BFA acting student. “A lot of times as actors we forget that a major component of our work is to communicate with the audience, and this is a great reminder.”

Maggie D’Ambrose, also a senior BFA acting student, agreed.

“We usually don’t get to come out and mingle with the other colleges in the areas out here,” she said. “But to see families come out with their kids, and to see the alumni, it really gives you a sense of the larger community.”

Norah Scheinman, an MFA student, who sat on the sidelines ready to distribute information about the school, said the clowning around served as a great introduction.

“Clowning is one of the courses that we actually teach at Mason Gross School of the Arts,” she said. “To come out here is a really great, friendly way of introducing ourselves and the school.”

Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick listens as Utility Operations Director Joe Witkowski explains the details of a plan to use solar energy to power the Livingston Campus.

Rutgers’ bold vision for a campus powered by solar energy was a focal point for Rutgers Day 2011. Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick was among the many who visited a Voorhees Mall site to hear about the plan from the university’s director of utility operations, and to view the designs and models for the canopies.

“When we get this done, it will be the largest canopy system in the nation,” said Joe Witkowski, the utility operations director.

The canopies, which will be constructed in parking areas on the Livingston Campus, will provide 53 percent of Livingston’s power. Combined with the already existing solar energy farm, the Livingston Campus will have 64 percent of its power provided by renewable solar energy.

Over a 20 year period, the project will save the university $28 million.

The university is on track to award the contract in June, and construction is expected to begin in September. The project is expected to be finished in December of 2012.

McCormick also reviewed another of the university’s solar initiatives, taking a “virtual tour” of a prototype solar house, which will be built in Newark this summer by a team of students from Rutgers and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Once it is tested, the house will be dismantled and transported to Washington as part of the international U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition.

Buddhists from the Republic of Kalmykia greet American Buddhists Joshua and Diana Cutler at the New Jersey Folk Festival.

For Telo Tulku Rinpoche, a golden-robed Buddhist lama, Rutgers Day 2011 provided a key moment of recognition for his people – the Buddhist community of Kalmykia, an autonomous Russian republic on the western shore of the Caspian Sea.

The New Jersey Folk Festival on the Cook/Douglass Campus honored the culture of the Kalmyks, who are the descendants of tribes that migrated to Europe during the early part of the 17th century.  Kalmykia is the only European nation to of Mongolian origin and the only one whose national religion is Buddhism.

There is a Kalmyk Diaspora community in New Jersey with about 3,000 people.

“Having this festival dedicated to the Kalmyk people, we overcome many barriers and misunderstandings about one’s culture, identity and tradition,” said Tulku, the spiritual leader of the Kalmyks. “Being here today,  we present our culture, our beliefs and tradition. The more that people absorb, the more we have understanding.

“And with understanding comes respect.”

The festival featured Kalmyk dance troupes, crafts, and a presentation that showed what an old shrine in the Kalmyk culture would look like.

Elie Rosen with self-navigating robot

It seems as if Rutgers engineering students are always on the move. Sometimes slowly and quietly, sometimes quickly and noisily.

The slow and quiet crowd has built a robot that can drive itself around a course full of obstacles using its own GPS navigation, laser sighting device and five cameras. The robot crawls slowly and deliberately, powered by small electric motors fed by batteries in the bottom of the two-foot-tall rectangular platform.

The robot will test its abilities in June against 40 other schools at a competition in Michigan, said Elie Rosen, webmaster of the student group that designed and built it. That group is the Rutgers student chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. This is Rutgers’ first year in the competition.

Rutgers Formula race car speeds past the woods in back of Werblin Center

The fast and noisy crowd has been doing its thing for two decades now – building and racing open-cockpit, open-wheeled race cars that are about half the size of their Indy car or Formula One racing cousins. Rutgers Formula Racing team members are displaying this year’s car and taking a previous year’s car for spins around the Werblin Center parking lot. The noise of the motorcycle engines that power these cars can be heard across the Busch campus, drawing spectators who have “a need for speed.”

After Rutgers Day is over, the team will pack up their new car and head west for two competitions – one in May in Michigan and a second in June in California.

Read more about Rutgers Formula Racing here.

Jon Mayes sandwiched between two beds of nails

A highlight of winter holiday season at Rutgers is the annual Faraday Christmas Children’s Lecture – a show that dazzles young and old alike with exploding hydrogen balloons, frozen flowers shattering like glass and a daring professor blasting himself across the room on a rolling cart, jet-powered by a fire extinguisher.

An encore presentation of that popular lecture starts at 2 p.m. on Rutgers Day, in the Physics Lecture Hall on the Busch Campus, a few steps off the Engineering Quad in the direction of Frelinghuysen Road.

Warming up before the lecture are physics students giving Rutgers Day guests one-on-one explanations of the lecture’s various antics. Jon Mayes reclined on a bed of nails and a fellow student put another bed of nails atop him – a student sandwich. Two other students stepped on him, demonstrating that when there are a lot of nails, the pressure on any one nail is not that great, and thus there is no threat to Jon’s well being.

Mayes explains to a young guest how he survived being sandwiched in the beds of nails

At a table near the lecture hall entrance, Kennard Bowden demonstrated electricity and magnetism to a young guest who watched a metal disk wobble down a copper ramp, and later saw a larger metal disk break-dance atop a plate of copper cooled to subzero temperatures by liquid nitrogen.

An aquarium half-filled with water played visual tricks, with playing cards disappearing when dunked into the tank – demonstrating how light bends in water.

Enjoy the show!

Visitors enjoy watching a virtual tour of a solar house that is being designed and built by Rutgers and NJIT students.

Be sure to stop by Voorhees Mall near Seminary Place on the College Avenue Campus to get a close-up look at solar panels and other solar projects going on at Rutgers.

President Richard L. McCormick is scheduled to come by for a demonstration early this afternoon.

A youngster enjoys the urban planning exhibit on Voorhees Mall.

But many visitors have already arrived to view a virtual tour of a solar house being built by Rutgers and NJIT students as part of a Solar Decathalon Competition.

Others are enjoying exhibits about urban planning from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.

See you over there.

Andrew Sullivan from Stop Hunger Now instructs volunteers how to make food packages

When Rutgers Day ends, Sullivan and his team from Stop Hunger Now will truck the packages to Philadelphia, and next week, they will be on their way to Haiti or Nicaragua for distribution to local schools, where they will make nutritious meals for local children.

Sullivan slowly walked them through the process which would soon become swift and second nature: grab a plastic bag, drop a multivitamin packet in the bottom, then add a cup of soy protein, a scoop of dehydrated carrots, onions, celery and tomatoes, followed by another cup of rice. Drop this into a “runner tray,” so-named because when the four volunteers at each table finish five bags, another volunteer called a “runner” sprints it over to the scale table.

There, other volunteers make minor adjustments to the bag’s weight, to ensure it weighs between 377 and 382 grams for consistency in shipping. The first bag of the morning was over 400 grams. Scoop out a tablespoon of rice into a container, and the bag is just right. Now close it with a heat sealer, and it can stay fresh for five years.

Volunteers assemble a soy, vegetable and rice casserole package

School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) dean David Finegold told the group they are practicing scientific management techniques that expert Frederick Taylor wrote about 100 years ago. “That’s what our whole school is about – improving the world of work,” he said.

Volunteers affiliated with SMLR and Rutgers Against Hunger hope Rutgers Day guests will stop by the Werblin Center multisports gym and help fill bags. You may be startled, not only by how fast the process goes and how fun it is to participate in this worthwhile activity, but by the crashing gong that Sullivan hits every time volunteers package the equivalent of 1,000 meals. Expect loud cheers as everyone celebrates one more step toward the day’s goal of filling 40,000 meals!