The secret lives of our profs
Alice G. Chapman Professor Emeritus of Physics John Brandenberger
Rachel Young
Issue date: 11/6/09 Section: Features
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John Brandenberger: All right, so I grew up in Illinois, but I went to Carleton College. I thought I would eventually be an engineer and do one of those 3-2 programs with either MIT or Columbia, and in the third year, which is supposed to be the last year before you go to the other institution for two years, I found I liked it so much that I wanted to spend my senior year there. I was majoring in physics, and I was going to go on to be an engineer. Physics is a pretty good background for most kinds of engineering, but then after finishing in physics, I decided I wanted to stay in physics, so I went to graduate school. I met a guy in graduate school at Brown University who taught at Lawrence, and we used to play tennis together. He was always telling me about how great Lawrence was. There was an opening [at Lawrence to teach] when I was finishing in 1968, and I came up, and joined the place. During the summer between my junior and senior year at Carleton, I spent a lot of time doing research, and I had wondered then what a career in a small liberal arts college would be like. To do physics there and to teach mainly physics, and try to do some research, to the degree that it would be possible, and it looked pretty good to me. In that sense, I think from early on, since I was a junior in college, really, I was thinking an academic career in a liberal arts college had a number of advantages. I realize that at this college I would get to have lunch with historians and mathematicians and Russian professors, and it's a nice broad thing. I married a woman who is a musician, so it was natural to come to Lawrence [as well] because there were opportunities for her here. She teaches violin down in the arts academy.
Young: As you mentioned a bit, in a liberal arts setting, you get to have lots of different types of students in your classes, and maybe physics isn't always their strength. How do you deal with students who aren't very excited about physics, and make the subject relatable to everyone?
Brandenberger: Right, so, one's approach depends on the audience. For example, when I've taught freshman studies and we've had "Relativity," or when I have non-majors in my introductory physics courses, I tend to stress conceptual physics, and hold the amount of mathematical content at a modest level. I instead try to reinforce the physical, the physical thinking, physical argument, waving one's hands as I'm doing right now, to better understand motion, or light, or other things. I think that works pretty well for me, to stress the conceptual things. When I teach, I call on students quite a bit, and initially, that puts them off, puts them on edge, but after awhile they get used to it, and I think they realize that by my calling on them I figure out what they have learned and what they understand. When they can't answer ... I realize I need to go over it again, so through my questioning, we achieve a certain amount of drill that I think sometimes helps, especially the non-physics student, assimilate the material.
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