PHYS 106: How Things Work, II PHYS 826: Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy
Q: How did you end up at U.Va.?
A: Well, I've actually been here a couple of times. I went to graduate school here many years ago. I got my degree here, and then I left for a few years and came back. I never really expected to come back, but they had a job opening. I really liked it here, my wife liked it here, so we decided we'd like to come back.
Q: Why didn't you expect to come back?
A: It's not very often that a place where you get your degree you're able to come back as faculty... it's sort of like once you've been a student here, you're always a student here, and you don't come back as faculty. It's sort of the typical way it works. Actually, the whole thing of coming here in the first place -- my family has a big history here. My grandparents and great-grandparents and my parents and my sisters and brothers got their degrees here, so it's been many, many years.
Q: What degree did you get here, and what is your overall educational background?
A: Well, I have a Ph.D. in physics, and I got my bachelor in physics and math from what's now the University of Louisiana, in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Q: You mentioned that this is your first time teaching How Things Work. What do you think of it?
A: It's a lot of work, but it's fun. I'm learning a lot of stuff, actually. I learn something new every time I teach a class. You get to learn different ways of talking about stuff that you know, and you learn things that you didn't know before. Even though I understand the basic physics concepts, a lot of what's talked about -- I haven't really done a lot with, say, a radio, or microwave oven. Even though I know the basic principles of how they work, I need to know it better in order to teach a class. So I have to do some outside reading, and look at things and learn things. So it's fun. It's challenging. And it's really challenging to teach physics with no equations and no math -- or very little, at least. And that's different, too, because to talk in a class for 50 minutes -- to have a class that goes on for that long without having to resort to doing an example problem or writing down an equation is tough. So that's the hardest part.
Q: Do you ever worry that a demonstration will go horribly wrong, for example, when you're burning things in a microwave?
A: I guess I do worry about that somewhat, but I'm sort of used to it. I've taught enough classes where the demonstrations go bad. Nothing's ever happened terrible, like anyone gotten hurt or anything like that. That would be the only thing that would be really bad. If it just doesn't work, well ok, then you can either try to explain why it might not of worked, or you can just say, 'well gee, I have no idea why this happened,' and try again sometime. When they fail, usually it's for a good reason, and part of the fun of it is actually coming to it later and looking at it and saying 'Why did this fail? Why didn't this do what I expected it to do?' and trying to learn from that. And that's sort of what we do in the research lab. We try to do experiments, and when they don't work right -- when they don't come out how we expect, that's when you really learn something new. If everything always turned out the way you expected it, then you would never learn anything.
Q: What type of class do you prefer -- small or large?
A: That's a good question. I don't like doing anything too much in a row. I like to spread things out. That's one of the great things about being in a university, and a teacher, is that you can actually change what it is that you teach. And I'd really get bored with the same class if I taught it more than three times. And not just in a row, but at all. Because I sort of get the feeling that I have a hard time breaking away what I'm saying from what the students are hearing. And after I've taught the class a couple times, I get the feeling that everyone out there knows just what I'm saying, because I'm so used to saying it. And it's hard to break out of that and think that this is new material for them because it seems so old to me. So I have a really tough time teaching a class more than two or three times. That's why [How Things Work] is nice, because it's something very different from what I've been doing. It's a nice opportunity, and hopefully I'll teach it again, because it does take some time to work up to it and get the notes prepared and stuff, so hopefully I'll get a chance to teach it again at some point, too.
Q: What kind of research do you do?
A: I do atomic and molecular physics research.Primarily the fun part is using lasers. We build a lot of our own lasers here, and we use some pretty sophisticated, very intense, very unique lasers to try to study atoms and the way that electrons move around inside of atoms and molecules.
Q: What do you like to do in your free time?
Well, these days, most of my free time is taken up with my three boys at home. And so, whatever it is they want to do -- play basketball, or play a game, play chess, play in the backyard on the swings, whatever -- is what I usually do for my free time now. When I'm not with my kids, I like skiing, I like scuba diving, a whole bunch of stuff, a lot of outdoors. I like watching sports. I like college sports -- I'm a huge U.Va. fan. I go to all the football games, and I go to as many basketball games as I can. I like a lot of different types of sports, and that's something we can do with the kids, too, so that's fun for me and fun for them.
Interview by Hannah Woolf
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