Earl Zwicker's home page
Welcome to Earl Zwicker's home page at IIT. I am part of the
SMART
program at IIT and am developing
interactive science and mathematics lessons to be available on the internet
for anyone to access.
I am a Professor Emeritus
at Illinois Institute of Technology
Some of my interests are tennis, teaching/learning, choir.
If you would like to interact with my SMART lessons, click on The Pythagorean Puzzle
or The Bernoulli Effect, Conceptually, respectively.
Professional Interests
Earl Zwicker has dedicated the past thirty years to perfecting
and proselytizing an interactive approach to teaching introductory
physics courses. He believes that physics is best taught in the spirit
of the "Christmas Lectures" of Michael Faraday through participation
in "live' classroom experiences to observe basic phenomena and explore
physical principles. He suggests that students will learn physics more
readily through such experiences. He asserts that the traditional,
relatively abstract, approach to the teaching of physics dampens the
enthusiasm and excitement of discover and creates unnecessary obstacles
to learning, which can be avoided by well-focused, incisive classroom
experiences involving physical phenomena. Earl Zwicker has worked
tirelessly, through good times and lean, to spread the message of
"phenomenological physics" throughout the land. A generation of students
at IIT and other regional institutions have had a more direct and
meaningful experience as a result of his efforts. He is an internationally
recognized figure as founder and guiding spirit of the much-acclaimed
high school teachers program operating in the Chicago area for the past
thirty years. He has been a guru for students, classroom teachers, and
educators who are struggling to improve the teaching of mathematics and
science---perhaps the most serious challenge facing our society today.
References to Michael Faraday
Other Links
Last update on July 11, 2001 by Earl Zwicker.