Re: [Phys-L] Physics prof strips down to underwear to teach QM

["David Marx" <marx@phy.ilstu.edu>]

One of the respondants to the article on the website named MUPPAL appropriately wrote:

This article makes no effort to describe the nature of the class or the professor's credentials. This 
stunt was pulled in a class called Frontiers of Science, a one-semester science class required of all 
freshmen at Columbia. Its content consists of lectures on cutting edge research in fields like physics, 
neuroscience, earth science, etc. Every semester, one of the topics is quantum mechanics. And the 
lecturer gets approximately 1.5 hours (not 1) to lecture. As I said, it's taught to ALL freshmen. So that's 
film studies majors, economics majors, biology majors, English majors, etc., ie. kids who would never 
have exposure even to the canonical features of qm like the uncertainty principle or the wave-particle 
duality. If you're not studying quantum mechanics rigorously, which I'm assuming a majority of the 
commenters on this article haven't, then the conclusions of the theory are quite unintuitive as they 
arise from more complex mathematics than simple addition and subtraction. The professor's stunt was 
simply to preface the excitement and confusion of qm by doing something exciting and confusing (and 
also because it's a lecture series that most freshmen skip because it's frankly quite boring). 

As for Emlyn Hughes, there are probably few people better qualified to discuss quantum mechanics. 
The man's pedigree and research speak for themselves, so before any of you choose to insult this 
man, understand that he could wipe the floor with you, and well, most researchers in particle physics. 

The "controversy" over this is idiotic. But I'd be willing to bet the kids who were sitting in that lecture 
will remember the basic features of quantum mechanics better than anything else they've learned in 
the course. In which case, Professor Hughes did his job and did it well.



On 19 Feb 2013 at 13:49, Strickert, Rick wrote:

> "Columbia [University] professor strips down to underwear in bizarre lesson to help baffled students learn quantum mechanics" 
> http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/video-prof-strips-bizarre-lesson-article-1.1267461#ixzz2LJlqqm6g
>
> "'In order to learn quantum mechanics, you have to strip to your raw, erase all the garbage from your brain, and start over again,' Prof. Emlyn Hughes said. Against a backdrop of 9/11 and Holocaust images, he remained in a fetal position as two people dressed as ninjas blindfolded stuffed animals." 
>
> Is this some new technique for teaching about subatomic particles?  I wonder what Prof. Hughes has in mind when he decides to teach his students the Bra-ket notation in QM.   
>
> More seriously, what could be learned from a CAT scan of Prof. Hughes' brain, or a review of any recent changes in medications.
>   
>
> Rick Strickert
> Austin, TX
>
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