A circus is coming to town this week.

Don’t look for elephants — but you could expect something close to a trapeze stunt.

This “Physics Circus” is the annual U of M event featuring The Physics Force, a group of teachers and a professor from the Institute of Technology who perform for more than 20,000 school-age kids a year and have appeared at Disney’s Epcot Center as well as on Newton’s Apple, and the Knoff-Hoff Show, a popular German television science program.

The ulterior motive is to show that difficult subjects like physics and math can be fun and interesting. But entertainment is a priority too. Among the acts billed for this year’s circus is one in which “a physicist drop(s) 20 feet through thin air while his friend shoots a ball at him from a cannon.”  The lesson in the stunt is to demonstrate the effect of gravity on projectiles.

School groups will begin seeing the Physics Circus on Wednesday, Jan. 6.

The big public performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 7, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 10, in Northrop Auditorium, 84 Church St. SE., Minneapolis. The show is free, but there is a fee for on-campus parking.

You can see more information and a video preview of the demonstrations here.