[Commons-Law] At 71, physics professor is a web star

[Prashant Iyengar]

*http://www.indianexpress.com/printerFriendly/252335.html
*

*At 71, physics professor is a web star*

**

New York Times

*Posted online: Thursday, December 20, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST *

CAMBRIDGE, DECEMBER 19
Walter H G Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). And he has now emerged as
an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute
created to spread knowledge through cyberspace.

Professor Lewin's videotaped physics lectures, free online on the
OpenCourseWare of MIT, have won him devotees across the country and beyond
who stuff his e-mail in-box with praise.

"Through your inspiring video lectures I have managed to see just how
beautiful physics is, both astounding and simple," a 17-year-old from India
e-mailed recently.

Steve Boigon, 62, a florist from San Diego, wrote: "I walk with a new spring
in my step and I look at life through physics-coloured eyes."

Professor Lewin delivers his lectures with the panache of Julia Child
bringing French cooking to amateurs and the zany theatricality of YouTube's
greatest hits. He is part of a new generation of academic stars who hold
forth in cyberspace on their college websites and even on iTunes U.

In his lectures at ocw.mit.edu, Professor Lewin beats a student with cat fur
to demonstrate electrostatics. Wearing shorts, sandals with socks and a pith
helmet, he fires a cannon loaded with a golf ball at a stuffed monkey,
wearing a bulletproof vest to demonstrate the trajectories of objects in
free fall. He rides a fire-extinguisher-propelled tricycle across his
classroom to show how a rocket lifts off.

He was No 1 on the most downloaded list at iTunes U for a while.

MIT recently expanded its online classes by opening a site aimed at high
school students and teachers. Judging from his fan e-mail, Professor Lewin,
who is among those featured on the new site, appeals to students of all
ages.

Some of his correspondents compare him to Richard Feynman, the
free-spirited,a Nobel laureate who popularised physics through his books,
lectures and television appearances. With his wiry grayish-brown hair, his
tortoiseshell glasses and his intensity, Professor Lewin is the iconic
brilliant scientist.

"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.

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.

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 Iraq, you
made me love the US because you are there and MIT is there." Fun matters.

Chasing rainbows hooked Boigon. He was vacationing in Hawaii when he noticed
the rainbow outside his hotel. Why were the colours always in the same
order? When he returned home, Boigon Googled rainbows. Within moments, he
was whisked to MIT.

"All of you have looked at rainbows," he begins. "But very few of you have
ever seen one. Seeing is different than looking. Today we are going to see a
rainbow."

He explains how the colours always appear in the same order because of how
light refracts and reflects in the water droplets. For the finale, he
creates a rainbow by shining a bright light into a glass sphere containing a
single drop of water.

"There it is!" he cries.

"Your life will never be the same," he tells his students. "Because of your
knowledge, you will be able to see way more than just the beauty of the bows
that everyone else can see."
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