JamesCronen.com

I love teaching, and I love physics. Combining the two, I guess I’ve chosen the perfect career.

Physics is a subject that I believe becomes more beautiful as one studies it. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems that other subjects become more confusing as the details and rudiments of practice interfere with one’s appreciation. For example, in addition to teaching physics I’m a performing musician. I sometimes wish I wasn’t, just because it must be a wonderful “ignorance” to be able to listen to a beautiful work of art and not analyze it.

I think physics goes in the other direction. The pieces are interesting, but when you look at all the topics together there’s a certain beauty that comes from all the pieces.

I’d like to use some space on this blog to present a straightforward physics course in installment form. This course is designed for everyone — students, teachers, parents, and the everyday person that hated their high school physics class and wants another shot at it. Overall, I want you to have some appreciation for the subject I love.

I don’t have a Ph.D. in physics and I never will (due to lack of time, not lack of ability). Some topics in this course may be a little rough around the edges, so please bear with me. I ensure that the information is as accurate as I can make it, and I count on your support.

Physics is about both the qualitative (describing phenomena) and quantitative (measuring phenomena). This is only natural — in our attempts to understand nature we often need to know how much of something there is or how much energy it has. In order to provide a model for measurements and relationships, physicists use formulas to express ideas. I’m going to use a couple formulas here and there, but don’t be frightened by them. I’m going to aim to use as few formulas as possible, and when I use a formula I’m going to explain every little bit about its use. If you’re not a math person, it’s really okay. A few physicists in history, most notably Michael Faraday, had trouble with mathematics.

I hope you enjoy the course. This is a great experiment for me and hopefully this will be a rewarding experience for you! The first installment is coming soon.

While starting a blog with the word “physics” in the title may seem like instant blog suicide, I’m going to chance it for now. It only seems fitting, in my first post, to give a brief history as to why I chose to study physics.

I fell in love with physics in the eleventh grade. My teacher, Mrs. Emmetts, was in her mid-fifties. She had red hair and a wry smile. On the first day of class, written on the board in large cursive letters, was the phrase that succinctly described her attitude towards physics, and that which she intended to give to her students:

I learned from Mrs. Emmetts that most physics teachers are at least partially insane. I wondered about the cause and effect — whether the insanity comes from studying the king of sciences or whether one must be nutso in the first place to even think about staring down the reasons behind the universe’s creation. I didn’t know much about physics other than that it was an especially difficult science that was heavily math-oriented.

How, then, could physics be PHUN?

Physics was going to be hard. Maybe physics was phun in the same way that getting punched in the arm sixty-seven times in a row gets to be phun (that is, you’re in such misery that you just have to start laughing about it).

To this day, because of Mrs. Emmetts, “Physics is phun” is the slogan I use with my students to get them to think about the joy of studying physics. This is not the same kind of joy one gets when their favorite NFL team wins the Super Bowl. This is the joy that one gets completing a difficult crossword puzzle or sudoku, completing a craft or handiwork, or learning a new skill.

The joy of studying physics is a sense of accomplishment. Being able to discover even the smallest insight into the universe’s inner workings feels as if Mother Nature is entrusting you with one of her most closely-guarded secrets. I became a physics teacher because I wanted to help students find these insights on their own.

Through this blog, I intend to share with you my love of physics and my personal calling to help physics students in their studies. My goal is to write articles for physics teachers, physics students, and anyone else who thinks they might be interested in the subject. I don’t intend on writing this blog above a high school level; in fact, you shouldn’t feel as if you even need to have taken a physics course in order to participate. Future articles will include insights for physics students, test-taking hints, practice problems for test-taking, problems of interest, commentary on news in physics and mathematics, and random bits of interest. Join me — let’s discover nature’s secrets together.