Navigating nonlinear career paths -- a personal perspective

Today, I would like to share my personal motivation for studying physics and eventually pursuing a PhD. You will realize that my motivation has changed quite a bit over time, but I firmly believe that I always followed my heart and trusted my instincts. Perhaps the main takeaway from this blog post is this: Always follow your passion, stay open to new opportunities, and do not view shifting gears as a negative thing. I hope that my personal story will inspire some of the readers and encourage folks to chase their dreams. While many steps in my CV may seem logical and straightforward, I would state that, in some regards, my career has taken a nonlinear path.

 

My initial passion was astrophysics. As a kid, I was captivated by documentaries on German cable TV that dealt with black holes, supernovae, comets and the Big Bang. I also loved watching the science-fiction series "Stargate" and admired the role of the astrophysicist Dr. Samantha Carter, who could eloquently explain everything that is going on in the universe. In high school, physics was not necessarily my best subject, but I certainly did enjoy it. Other contendors for my future college major were computer science and electrical engineering, but ultimately I decided to pick physics. My decision was primarily driven by the hope to find answers to the big questions about the universe while still being able to secure a decent job in the future, since physicists appeared to be in reasonably great demand in the job market.

Augmented reality, computational physics, engaging students

Just in time for the weekend, here are a few brief items that contain interesting reads and food for thought on physics education: 

"Any questions? No? Great, let's move on." -- Wait time and awkward silence in the classroom

I have no doubt that every educator is familiar with the following situation:

 "Are there any questions?"

"What is a harmonic oscillator?"

 "What is the difference between a metal and an insulator?"

etc.

We ask an (open-ended) question to engage our students and start looking around at their faces in the lecture hall or classroom. Most students seem to look down at their desk or simply stare into space. After what feels like eternity, we decide to break the awkward silence and answer the question ourselves -- or, in the case of the "Are there any questions?"-question, we would say something along the line of "No? Great, let's move on to the next chapter." 

Teaching and communicating magnetism

This is a reprint of an article that I have written for the IEEE Magnetics Society Newsletter (November 2022 issue, edited by Jia Yan Law). Please do check out the Newsletter if you are interested in contents related to magnetism, technology, activities of the Magnetics Society as well as announcements of conferences, awards and events.

Nowadays, the majority of people are likely to encounter magnetism in their everyday lives, be it by simply seeing the magnets on their refrigerator door, using magnetized screwdrivers, navigating with a compass, swiping a credit card, undergoing an MRI scan, or saving an image file on their computer's magnetic hard drive. Of course, in the IEEE Magnetics Society, we have a much closer and more professional relationship with the world of magnetism, for instance, by conducting fundamental research or driving the evolution of magnetism-based technologies. This places us in an optimal situation to teaching and communication outreach in the field of magnetism!

Having the right mindset for a physics degree

Recently, I had a nice discussion with a colleague about the mindset of undergraduate physics freshmen (i.e., first-year) students. This conversation has inspired today's blogpost on the very same topic. 

Many things are different at a university as compared to high schools. Physics students oftentimes feel overwhelmed during their first semesters at college. Professors are rushing through the course material, homework is due every week in multiple classes, and a major part of the fellow students appear to be geniuses. They seem to grasp even complex contents very quickly, do not need to spend much time on their homework and ask a lot of smart questions during the lectures. One might get the impression that they do not need to work hard to pass exams and achieve their goals. These are only a few examples of the mindset that many students tend to develop. I would like to argue that such thoughts are largely unfounded and are making life unnecessarily harder for many students.

Does (condensed matter) physics have an image problem?

Fewer and fewer people in Germany choose physics as their major at a university. 

This is not just hearsay, but it is actually based on a statistical evaluation by the German Society of Physics (sorry, the document is in German only, but you can clearly see the trend in Fig. 1). Also, there are fewer people getting a B.Sc., M.Sc. and PhD degree.  

Here are some thoughts on the issue whether physics -- in particular, condensed matter physics, because that is the very discipline I am working in -- has an image problem and why physics as a subject may be less appealing to people nowadays than it used to be some years and decades ago. Certainly, I do not have a simple solution for this problem, but perhaps some of the following points could be important factors in this context.

What is this blog about?

Welcome to the "Teaching Physics in Higher Education" blog! 

My name is Dr. Martin Lonsky and I am currently a research scientist at the Goethe-University Frankfurt in Germany. Aside from conducting research, I have a great passion for teaching physics and materials science. I am always excited about trying out new teaching approaches and to spark students' interest for natural sciences by conveying my enthusiasm for the aforementioned subjects. 

But why exactly did I decide to start writing my very first blog? Does the world really need a blog about teaching, especially in the field of physics? Is there really so much to talk about this specific topic?