...this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.‘sup
Ok, so here’s my idea: There are already many resources, sites, essays, and books regarding physics and astronomy for a general audience. Those crops are pretty well-watered.
What I haven’t seen are resources for a slightly more “advanced” lay-person or students of the fields at, say, the sophomore or junior level. There are absolutely wonderful textbooks covering all this, but maybe that’s a bit much; a lot of people might like to spur their own interest through casual reading. And I’m sure others might have thought of writing general purpose books about all this (and some have), but the audience might be a bit small to convince a publishing house to make a complete book project of it.
Sometimes there are just utterly beautiful applications of physics that show up as examples in texts, insightful problems, or “it can be shown that…” remarks in books. I’d like to investigate some of these and write a bit about them to spark some interest, discussion, or reflection amongst like-minded people who simply are fascinated by these things.
So here I am.
Maybe there are a few of you who might like to read an in-depth solution (or at least an analysis) of an interesting phenomenon or problem that we can address with a bit of math and physics at the University level. At the very least, I’m going to have fun writing about it and learning right along with you, so I’ll just sort of captain my own vessel and welcome anyone who wants to drop in from time to time to read about interesting things. My personal fascinations involve learning how it is we know the things we assert:
the size of atoms
the structure and evolution of stars
quantum behavior
the age of the Universe
distances to stars and galaxies
so many articles will lean this way.
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Who am I?
I was an excited student of physics and astronomy long ago, ultimately graduating with a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. I learned some programming skills while in graduate school and took jobs as a software engineer for a few years after graduating, specializing in 3D scientific visualization. But I couldn’t shake the excitement I always felt for physics and trying to evangelize that love to others, so remembering how much I enjoyed teaching in grad school, I decided to make the leap into public science education at the community college level. That pure focus on teaching, contact with students, and the feeling of making a real difference in people’s lives has been so rewarding — the only thing missing (to me) is the chance to share what beauty can be found at the slightly higher levels of physics. I remember sometimes losing a bit of focus and drive when drilling one proof or homework set after another, so I used to like to poke through books for cool examples of things we can know using the physics we’d just learned.
First Excited State indeed — many times I’d fall to the ground state and remain in that state of lowest energy. But sometimes something would come along, some “collisional excitation” in discussions with friends, or an “absorption” of a new idea, and I’d transition up. I suppose this is my continuing effort to try to emit some sort of illuminating passion to anyone else excited by the same things.
If you’re a student/teacher and want to see lots of worked examples that I like to include in my classes when I teach the “standard” University Physics 1 and 2 courses, feel free to browse the (growing) collection of 150+ videos at
If you just want to support this effort, I’m not above accepting a “tip jar” of coffee or pizza:
If these are things you like to read about in your spare (ha!) time, subscribe and join me for a bit as we try to appreciate this Universe we’re embedded in a little bit more…
