Physics with Euler
Photo Credit: Amanda Vidimos
Amanda Vidimos
February 10, 2012
Filed under Featured Multimedia, Life
There are a lot of well known and loved teachers, but Euler is one of most well known and loved teachers; he is known for all the cool and dangerous experiments he does, and the way he can connect with his students when they do not understand something.
Although most of the experiments Euler does are dangerous, his students really love doing them in his class because, “you learn a lot of cool stuff about how the world works,” explained AP physics student, Trevor Goode.
“It is a great class, I am so glad I took it. They are hard concepts, but Euler makes them make sense,” said AP Physics student, Victoria Bui.
Some of Euler’s most popular experiments are called; the bed of nails, flame tube, ping pong ball gun, and the flaming hoop of death, and bowling ball drop. These are all of the student’s favorite experiments he does to help his students understand physics better.
The students get excited when they walk into Euler’s classroom, and see the bed of nails, or a propane tank, knowing they are about to do dangerous experiment. All that hard work they did to understand physics is finally about to be shown to them, in front of their eyes.
The bed of nails experiment involves Euler lying on a bed of nails, with another bed of nails on top, and then the students smash a cinder block over him. The point of this lab is to show that when weight is distributed evenly over something, it takes a lot of pressure to do enough damage to harm something.
The flame tube has to do with sound waves. Euler takes a propane tank and has a tube going into a long pipe with little holes at the top, and a rubber glove covering up the other end of the pipe, creating a microphone. He lights the holes at the top, and then plays sounds, and music into the other end of the tube, and the fire makes sound waves.
Euler started doing these experiments six years ago, as soon as he began his career here at AHS. He gets most of his ideas from e-mails from other science teachers. “I started doing these experiments because they are awesome, and the students love them,” explained Euler when asked when and why he started doing these experiments.
“I like to do the experiments I do because they are dangerous, and the students enjoy it; they make the class really cool and really fun,” said Euler.
When talking to different physics students, they all agreed that people should take Euler’s physics class their junior or senior year of high school. Even Euler agreed with his students, “take physics because it is awesome.”
