Philosophy on Teaching Physics

Physics is the art of understanding the world around us. In its confines, we hope to derive a set of rules which accurately govern some aspect of its behavior; these rules are both practically useful in that we can use them to get the universe to act the way we want as well as academically beautiful in that they can provide insight which allows us to craft a more intimate portrait of the cosmos. From my experience, the most difficult part of physics for most students is developing a sense of intuition, which requires conceptualizing rather abstract rules and technical terminology into a connection with real life phenomena in the world around us.

For instance, I have graded exams where a large percentage of students predicted that a baseball thrown upwards would accelerate away from the ground. Intelligent and well-prepared, they aced the mathematics, but the characteristics of large lecture classes over zoom had rendered the information so abstract that they failed to realize that they were predicting that a gently tossed baseball would slip the surly bonds of earth. In considering any physical system, it is critical to learn to apply what one knows about the system in real life to inform your mathematical abstraction of the physical world.

This intuition, based on a deep understanding of the connection between phenomena and math, forms the core of physics, and is especially important in early courses. During a one-on-one session, I encourage students to practice this sort of reasoning by incorporating memorable real-life examples to help lead them through the necessary reasoning. Since I began tutoring in 2018, I've found that this approach enables students to learn this skill more effectively than they are often able to in a lecture-hall type of setting.