From toy blocks to national labs: A UTC student’s LEGO-powered path

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga senior physics major Landon Boone has always wondered how things work.

The Hendersonville, Tennessee, native is using LEGOs to do just that.

Boone knew from high school that he wanted to study physics. After arriving at the University, he looked for avenues to pursue his passion—and was introduced to the UTC chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS).

Boone said that the SPS at the time was small. He remembered that those initial meetings usually had only three or four students.

“I wanted to get involved with research as soon as possible. Not even for resume building, although that’s great, but I want to do this,” he said—pointing to the machines he helped build. “It’s always been a passion of mine to do this sort of stuff.”

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Dr. Tatiana Allen, UC Foundation professor of physics and associate department head, helped the transition after the COVID-19 pandemic when the club had few students. She was a significant factor in pursuing a project to help rebuild that sense of community.

When the club received funding, students began building a LEGO model of the Kibble Balance—a device developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to redefine the kilogram based on the Planck constant.

The Planck constant is a tiny number that shows how much energy a particle carries based on its frequency.

“You start out with a super fundamental thing,” Boone said. “Don’t we just know this? Everyone knows what a kilogram is, but the applications beyond that far exceed just that humble origin.”

By his junior year, Boone was president of the UTC SPS. He led the transition to a different project, the LEGOLAS project—short for LEGO-based Low-cost Autonomous Scientist—a machine-learning model developed at the University of Maryland, College Park.

This machine can automate the distribution of chemicals into certain wells at specified ratios.

“In theory, we could leave the room and this would still do its thing,” Boone explained. “It’s cool for the sake of efficiency, especially if the experiment’s tedious. You don’t have to have a researcher—like an actual person—doing it.”

Since he joined the SPS, its membership has tripled, with around 15 students attending each meeting.

“It’s been growing,” Boone said. “We’ve still been doing more experiments, more research. It’s been fun.

“As time went on, more physics majors came into the program and it grew. I’d definitely say the community is very tight.”

Boone explained how these projects have given purpose to club members. They give students an avenue to explore their passions.

“We’re not trying to collide particles together at a giant multibillion-dollar facility,” Boone said, “but we can figure out the mass of something very precisely and we can autonomously complete titration experiments in chemistry.”

These projects and his chemistry and physics department work led Boone to a fellowship opportunity with NIST. He participated in the program’s summer undergraduate research fellowship.

“Last summer, I went to Maryland and did not work on the LEGO kilowatt balance, but I got to work on research related to the real NIST-4 watt balance,” Boone said. “That’s the device that defines the kilogram for the United States. Nothing else is more precise than that.”

His research will be applied to table-top models of the NIST-4 watt balance.

“The people were all super nice,” Boone said. “Anytime I had a question, it wasn’t an expectation of you’re here and you’re supposed to be the best. They would help me. I had a lot of questions. The environment was just great.”

Boone was recently among a group of undergraduate UTC researchers who traveled to Nashville to present their work at Posters at the Capitol, a statewide undergraduate research showcase held at the Tennessee State Capitol on April 2.

After graduating in May, Boone will continue his education at UT Knoxville, where he will pursue a Ph.D. in physics. He hopes to work at a national lab after completing his degree.

“I went from making a toy model of something to helping improve the real one,” Boone said. “It was sort of like a ‘meeting your heroes’ type of thing. It was cool. I think the biggest thing was that this [model scale] is more of an educational tool than anything. Even though this can measure things precisely, it’s not winning any awards because the real one does it better.

“What I was doing there was actually real research that applies to the devices they’re making. It felt more impactful than what I had done before. It was really cool. I called my mom and said I got the fellowship. Thank goodness I played with LEGOs as a kid.”