  Physics education research has probed for the relevance of physics in
students' everyday lives. Attitudinal and epistemological surveys have asked
students if they think of or use physics in their daily lives. We have
previously documented how it is uncommon that our life science students
describe using or even seeing physics in their daily life (Nair, 2018). This
result was unsurprising and aligns with previous scholarship of students
majoring in disciplines outside of physics; we have argued that it is
optimistic for scholars to expect students with disciplinary homes outside of
physics to see their experiences through a lens of physics. Methodologically,
we searched for a contrasting case (Sam). Sam is majoring in the life sciences
and articulates moments where she uses physics to reason through everyday
phenomena. We explore the ways in which courses can support students like Sam
to find physics relevant to their everyday experiences.
