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| From Science is Awesome |
(You have to read the piece to get the joke in the picture!)
Monday, July 22, 2013
Ignatius of Loyola 22: Ignatian Spirituality and me
(You have to read the piece to get the joke in the picture!)
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I loved the quote from Purcell (in the article you linked to); thanks!
ReplyDeleteI had to use Purcell's intro textbook to electricity and magnetism and though at the time, "whoever wrote this terrible book must hate students!" Eight years later I was a postdoc at the Harvard College Observatory and got to know Ed Purcell, through a weekly lunch he had with post-docs to discuss interstellar dust. Of course, by then I also finally understood E&M and appreciated what a wonderful text he had written.
But in person he was even better: witty, enthusiastic, and very, very kind. In fact he loved students, and loved teaching. I can just hear him saying those words about seeing the world with new eyes... though I was not quite born, the year he actually said them.
Thank you for the story about Purcell, I read that bit from his lecture to my pchem students each year when we start NMR, and they will enjoy knowing that he was warmly encouraging as that lecture reads.
ReplyDeleteBut, oh, the joys of that first tramp through E&M, which my youngest is taking next fall. I greatly suspect that grasping the mysteries of E&M requires suffering the first time through no matter how clear the text or lecturer. I used Purcell's book as well, and remember spending much of my time trying to unravel the notation (I kept a little sheet with translations on it).