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Well, 802 is of course largely about electricity
and magnetism.
And at the heart of electricity and magnetism
are the four, the famous four, equations we
call the Maxwell's equations.
That's quite a difficult course for students
and I go out of my way to also introduce many
phenomena that they see around them and make
those phenomena connect with electricity and
magnetism.
For instance lightning.
I do an electrocardiogram in class.
I discuss metal detectors.
I discuss musical instrument.
Magnetic levitation.
I talk about Northern Lights which is very
relevant to electricity and magnetism.
I spend almost a whole lecture on particle
accelerators.
I tell them why the sunsets are red and why
the skies are blue.
I talk about rainbows, about halos, about
glories.
I talk about color perception
and since I do Doppler effect
I also talk about Big Bang cosmology
and then during my very last lecture
I introduce them to my research,
the research I did during my early days at MIT
when I was making x-ray observations
from very high flying balloons.
Altitudes of 140, 150 thousand feet.
So my goal is wherever possible to make them
see through the equations
to make them see the beauty all around them
and by doing that
to make them love physics.
Well the 802 course is the second course
in physics, it's, it's mandatory.
It's what we call a general Institute requirement.
You either have to take this course
or you have to take one
which is a slightly higher level 802-2.
So it is the, it is the bases that students get
during their first year.
801, the Newtonian mechanics and then 802, the electricity and magnetism.
And if they go into physics of course they
get a lot more but if they never go into physics
then this is all they will ever see about
physics which is quite a lot actually.
We evaluate the students through traditional
exams. The lectures are given in the main
lecture hall of MIT and then the students
meet in smaller groups with professors.
We call those recitations which is largely
problem-solving.
There are many events in this course.
Every lecture is an event and the students
who have taken me will tell you that indeed
going to my lectures is an event.
I'm not a very traditional lecturer so therefore
I would really like to think that each lecture
is an event we do have a contest which is
very very popular.
We hand to the students a piece of wood, some
copper wire, a few paper clips and two magnets
and the goal is to make an electric motor
and they get course credits depending upon
how fast their motor is going.
And this is really a real happening.
It's an incredible event and some of the motors
are extraordinary in their design.
If you and I would try to build a motor
you'll be lucky if you,
if your motor rotates 400 revolutions per minute.
but let me tell you some students go
to 5000 revolutions per minute mark.
Really quite amazing and they spend so much
time on that.
It is wonderfull event it is really a happening.
Well my message to all educators is--
what counts is not what you cover
but what counts is what you uncover
and this is often forgotten so there is
a general tendency,
not everyone, but the general tendency to ram too much
down the throats of the students
and overlook that that's very anti productive
because it goes one ear in, as we say in Holland,
and it goes the other ear out again.
So what you cover is not what matters but
what you uncover is what matters
and if you can somehow do it so that there are
parts of the course that they will remember for
the rest of their lives that's even more important.
If a student has come to my lectures on rainbows
and halos and glories,
for the rest of their lives rainbows will never
the same and they will always think of me
when they see a rainbow and in fact sometimes
twenty or thirty years after a lecture
they send me still pictures and they say:
"Professor Lewin I saw a rainbow
and I thought of you and here's a picture".
And the interesting thing is they sometimes
send me a picture which is not even a rainbow
which is a glory but that doesn't matter.
What it shows is that I have succeeded in
making them love physics and that's my goal.
And that should be the goal of every educator,
to make them love physics.
