Professor Walter Lewin from MIT Open Courseware
Posted: Saturday, April 30, 2011
by Connor Davidson
Those who have been directed from a search engine will be familiar with Walter Lewin, the MIT physics professor, and his work. You probably think he is wonderful, you’re most likely full of praise for his lectures, you may even help cram his in-box with fan mail. Despite the fact that this man fails as a physics professor. Were physics professors not supposed to be the boring old men who were responsible for the dwindling numbers of physics graduates? Physics was supposed to be boring.
From MIT, Creative Commons Lisence
The above is prof Lewin demonstrating that the period (time for one swing) of a pendulum does not depend on its mass. What happens in the lecture is that Lewin measured the time for ten swings on what I call the super-duper time measurey box (otherwise known as a stop watch) then does this again after having jumped on it. Aside from the obvious fact that this grabs your attention it also brings the equations to life and demonstrates what you are otherwise told to accept as true, period (pun intended). When I first learned this I was told – “omega (angular speed) equals two pi times the square root of gravitational field strength over length" and then “oh look there is no mass". I’m sure you could all learn that, it’s not an exceptionally complex equation, it’s just not quite as exciting or amusing as a bananas man with a banana swinging back and forward..
Alas, not all of his demonstrations are quite as nutty as the one above, however they do explain the physics. For example, I stopped writing this article about an hour ago as thinking about the lectures made me want to watch one. So I watched 8.01 Lecture 28 which explained Hydrostatics, Fluid Mechanics and Archimedes Principle. In this lecture he explained some fascinating physics which was, as he often says, “unintuitive". Imagine an apple on a string in a box on a trolley and a helium balloon on a string in another box on another trolley. Imagine the trolleys are accelerated away from you. How will the apple move and how will the helium balloon move? Bizarrely they will go in opposite directions. The apple will go towards you and the balloon will go away from you. Very strange.
Yet, it gets even stranger. I quote: “I’m going to beat you with cat fur". Yes, that’s how he chose to introduce the concept of static electricity and judging by the audiences reaction to the spectacle it appears to have worked. Teaching should be memorable.
Now let’s finish on a controversial note: in my opinion Levin’s lectures are better than the Feynman Lectures.
This Article has been viewed 1,915 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Sounds like a good teacherThanks for the comment.
Oh, you're so controversial! Really, I'll have to look up the Feynman Lectures to know what you're referring to.
I got lost last Friday in Boston and when I got off the bus I was actually standing in front of MIT. (True story!) That's as close as I get to intellectualism.
Glad to see you around here again.You'd be surprised how much physicists cherish the book of "The Great Explainer". On the official website of the lectures there are several stories about how the Feynman lectures has changed peoples lives.Though, the "controversial" is really just a satire of this.
Thanks for the comment.
HI Connor! It's been a while, how are you? Thanks for this fun read. If I had a science and math teacher like this, I may have paid more attention. Maybe not, but you never know :-) Blessings to you!Thanks for the comment.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.