Physics Is Fun

I read this NYTimes story in the SJMercury yesterday. At the time I was thinking, "What a great story! I'm surprised I haven't seen it on the top 10 most EMailed articles in the Times." Lo and behold, there it is. I loved physics in college, but being the money grubbing type that I am, I decided to forego my love of physics for the better paying engineering route. Still, I had some great physics teachers at GW. Particularly with intro physics, the classroom demonstration ruled. Now the power of online videos has made this MIT prof an online rockstar.

“We have here the mother of all pendulums!” he declares, hoisting his 6-foot-2, 170-pound self on a 30-pound steel ball attached to a pendulum hanging from the ceiling. He swings across the stage, holding himself nearly horizontal as his hair blows in the breeze he created.

The point: that a period of a pendulum is independent of the mass — the steel ball, plus one professor — hanging from it.

“Physics works!” Professor Lewin shouts, as the classroom explodes in cheers.

He's even bridging socio-cultural barriers:

A fan who said he was a physics teacher from Iraq gushed: “You are now my Scientific Father. In spite of the bad occupation and war against my lovely IRAQ, you made me love USA because you are there and MIT is there.”

Now that, as my old physics prof and this one would say, is beautiful.