Emory Physics graduate student Zachariah Germain participated in this year’s “Squishy Science Sunday” before the annual American Physical Society Global Physics Summit in Denver, CO. In Prof. Jennifer Rieser’s lab, Zach’s research focuses on 3D imaging and printing models of fire ant nests. And now, he helped to build one of these nests as an explorable world in Minecraft.
Parker Pinney was pretending to be a fire ant in a video game. Using a handheld controller, his insect avatar raced back and forth inside the labyrinthine tubes of an enormous nest. “It’s super fun,” the 11-year-old said, his eyes glued to the monitor set up in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Standing next to Pinney, Zach held a 3D printed plastic model of the same fire ant nest. He took questions from adults as their kids played the game.
“These tiny social insects build these nests with no supervisor,” said Germain. He and his colleagues pour epoxy resin into the nests, excavate them, and drive them to a local hospital, where they image them inside CT machines and map their geometry. (Their impressive engineering aside, the ants are invasive and harm local wildlife and vegetation. Germain’s Minecraft nest was one of dozens of demos at APS’ Squishy Science Sunday outreach event. The event involved the work of nearly 150 volunteer physicists from about 70 institutions in eight countries, and an estimated 1,500 people visited.
You can read the full story about Squishy Science Sunday here: https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2026/04/kids-hands-on-research