Undergraduate Corner: "Who Told You That?"

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

I think one of the most underutilized verses in the Bible is right at the beginning: "Who told you you were naked?"

I had a similar question arise last week in my Quantum Mechanics class.

One of my students was growing frustrated with his halting success and many intellectual roadblocks to completing the first round of homework problems. "How can I calculate this thing [the expectation value of x]?" he asked. "I've never even seen this kind of formula!"

I spent the better part of this week thinking over how to help him overcome his frustrations. It is, at first glance, an intimidating formula

but there was something odd about his frustration.

Then, I realized what it was: He was expecting to be able to complete this course using only concepts he already knew.

"Who told him that?" I asked myself. "Who told him he needed to know everything before taking a course?"

I realized, then, that this was a cognitive hurdle that many of my students were troubled by, at all levels of physics.

I brought this up with the student during class on Friday, as the students began to work another set of problems. "Somewhere along the way," I said, "someone told you---and many of your classmates---that you had to know everything before coming into a course. I don't know who did, or when or why, but that's what keeps you from succeeding."

His jaw hit the floor. He realized that it was true---and went on to best a rather lengthy Quantum Mechanics problem, involving many formulas more scary than that for <x> quoted above.

Where did these students get this idea? Who told them they did not---and could not ever---have what it takes?

A Journey into a Christian Physicist's Mind

I go through nearly the same line of thinking every time I hear or sing "God of Wonders" in church. It goes something like this:

First, I wonder if other Christians expect this to be my favorite worship song. I am a physicist, and the song is about God reigning over the universe. It's a good song, I tell myself, but not necessarily my favorite. Should it be my favorite?

Then, I move on to think that no, it's not my favorite; it's not even about my line of physics, after all. I don't really know that much about astrophysics or cosmology.

This is sometimes followed by a distraction into thinking about my friends in grad school who studied astrophysics or cosmology, or a distraction into thinking about my own field of study, in which case Hamiltonians and conductances and double-quantum-dot diagrams float around in my head. This may be followed by a brief sense of panic---I did actually graduate, didn't I? My Ph.D. defense wasn't just a dream, right?

After that distraction, I return to my original distraction with a little bit of unrest: Why aren't there any worship songs about condensed matter physics? Why don't we sing about God reigning over atoms and quarks and wave functions and strings? I might even try thinking of a few lines for such a song.

This is sometimes followed by a distraction into thinking about how the indeterminate nature of quantum mechanics might harmonize with the notion of a sovereign God. This, of course, gets me nowhere.

I then return to my original distraction, chiding myself for being so petty. I shouldn't let myself be distracted during worship! This is a nice song. We used to sing it all the time at my church in grad school... until we sang it for five weeks in a row one time, and we never seemed to sing it again after that.

The last time we sang it there, I recall, was just after the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded. One of the astronauts on board was a Christian, and his family had requested this song as one of the crew's wake-up calls.

It's at this point that I'm a little teary and a little sobered about my petty distractions. Aren't there so many more serious things out there? All right God, I silently pray, I'm free of distractions, and ready to worship!

It's at that moment that the song ends.

Happy 50th blog entry!