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Source: http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/63302/high-wire-actWalter Lewin is not merely dangling at the bottom of a 15-foot pendulum. He is swinging high and wide, his rapt audience of 300 counting off each cycle.
At 71, he's likely missed his window for a shot at Cirque du Soleil, but the Netherlands-born MIT physics professor seems happy with his own high wire act -- revealing to students, in the most unorthodox ways, the beauty of science.
His pendulum ride comes at the end of a lecture on Hooke's Law, in which he proves the pendulum's period, or time that it takes to complete one cycle, is not affected by the mass at the bottom -- in this case, his own body.
He will also, on other occasions, suck helium and continue his lecture sounding like a Dutch Daffy Duck to highlight the differences in the speed of sound in certain gases. He'll shoot across the classroom stage astride a bicycle mounted with fire extinguishers to demonstrate a rocket's change in momentum.
"It took me a decade to come to the realization," says Lewin at his MIT office, "that really what counts is not what you cover, but what counts is what you uncover."
What Lewin has uncovered is that requiring the memorization of formulas and equations is not the most effective way to teach. Teachers must, he believes, engage students with action.
One of his students, Carolyn Crull, a civil engineering major from San Diego, says Lewin's classroom theatrics have helped open her eyes to her surroundings.
"A lot of students spend their days just staring at the ground as they walk around," she says, " but, maybe you will look up every once in a while and see the beauty in the world."
While Lewin's students can see this first hand, a thousand others, many with little connection to the science world, watch each day online, sampling one of his 100 videotaped lectures made available through MIT's open courseware site.
His devoted Web following routinely makes him the most downloaded podcast on the Apple Store's "iTunes U." From email responses to his lectures, he's purportedly help snap some viewers out of depression, inspired career changes and even attracted two marriage proposals.
"You have to challenge [students]. You have to be a little fun. I could make them sit on the edge of their seats, I could make them wet their pants." â Walter Lewin
But Lewin says one of his most meaningful notes was from a man claiming to be from Iraq.
"In spite of the bad occupation and the war against my lovely Iraq," it reads, "you made me love USA because you are there and MIT is there."
The adulation is understandable. Lewin's lectures are not improvised, slapped-together affairs. They are intricate three-camera shoots, with each lecture taking forty hours to prepare and Lewin rehearsing them completely three times before students ever see them.
With cranes, pendulums and a number of construction-size visual aids that often have to be custom built in a university workshop, the lectures aren't cheap either. The series, funded by an outside grant, costs as much as $300,000.
At that price tag, it is important students are actually learning. Lewin ensures this, he says, by adhering to three principles; clarity, timing and suspense -- keep the focus tight, be precise and end with a big finish.
In one of his most dramatic and popular lectures, Lewin's big finish involves putting his face in the trajectory of a 33-pound steel wrecking ball to demonstrate Hooke's Law.
He holds the ball near his face and tells his audience if he provides even the slightest push, rather than just allowing the ball to swing away on its own momentum, it will be his last lecture. Students edge forward in their seats as he begins the countdown.
In one of his more famous demonstrations, Lewin faces down a wrecking ball.
"You have to challenge them. You have to make them laugh occasionally; you have to be a little fun. If I want to, I could make them cry, I could make them sit on the edge of their seats, I could make them wet their pants," Lewin says with unabashed confidence, "If you are really an artist, you can do all these things."
And there's little doubt that while he has a head for science, he also has the heart of an artist. That's fitting for a man who earned his PhD at the University of Delft, located in the hometown of one the most famous 17th century Dutch painters, Johannes Vermeer.
Inspired by his parents' love of art, Lewin himself has become an avid collector, but focuses on the modern. In his home he showcases works from such acclaimed contemporary artists as Julian Schnabel, Larry Rivers, John Wesley and Jacques Lipchitz.
"My interest in visual effects in my lectures may well have been influenced by my love for contemporary art," he reluctantly offers, after being pressed on the subject.
He's admittedly eccentric, sporting a revolving array of interesting rings and jewelry in the classroom, including broaches in the shape of bananas or fried eggs.
Lewin's commitment and enthusiasm are never in question. Especially in videotaped moments like this one:
"Five, four, thee, two, one," Lewin counts and very, very, gently releases the wrecking ball.
It swings back on a wide arc until it loses forward momentum and then drops back in the other direction, headed right for Lewin's face.
The professor close his eyes as a puff of wind from the ball blows kisses to his face, but the ball itself stops just millimeters from the tip of his chin. Students gasp.
"Physics works! And I'm still alive," Lewin exclaims to thunderous applause.
It's clear that those present or watching online will not soon forget this lesson on the conservation of mechanical energy -- nor the man who taught it to them.
There's a video in the link I have for the source.
