Why PHYS 121 is the best course ever

[hellomeow]

This guy is not only the easiest to understand and intelligent of any of my professors, but he's also the funniest and most bizarre character out of all of them. The class started off just being about vectors of acceleration in 3D and stuff like that, how derivatives of acceleration are tangent velocity vectors in three space etc. etc. And then he just made us all come out of the building and make a huge space and said, "Now pray to whichever deity you believe in that I don't lose my job or get killed." and ran up the physics building stairs with a backpack.

[Hauskaz]

... lmfao

Amazing.

[solocityElectricCyan]

Dude that's what the squirrel looked like on the road

oh man thats the best prof ever

[hellomeow]

Dr. Robert Mann is the chair of the Physics & Astronomy Department at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario Canada. He did his undergraduate work at McMaster University, and obtained his MSc. and Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. He then spent 2 years as an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, after which he joined the University of Toronto in 1984 as an NSERC University Research Fellow. He moved to the University of Waterloo in 1987, where he became a full professor in 1991. He served as the Director of the Guelph Waterloo Physics Institute for 2 years before becoming Chair in 2001.

Dr. Mann's research interests are in gravitation, cosmology and particle physics. with particular interests in black hole thermodynamics quantum gravity, particle physics, quantum information, chaotic phenomena, and the relationship between science and religion. He has published over 200 refereed articles in scientific journals, has given over 150 invited talks and made several media appearances. He has taught physics at all levels, from high school to graduate school, and has supervised ovr 40 graduate students in his career.

Dr. Mann has been a member of the CAP for over 25 years. He served as the chair of the Theoretical Physics Division from 1989-91, as Councillor for Southwestern Ontario 1997-98, and as a Friend of CAP since 2001. He was a member of the NSERC GSC for General Physics from 1995-98, and as a member of GSC 17 for Space & Astronomy from 2001-04, which he chaired in 2003/04. In 2006 he was a member of a grant panel for the National Science Foundation in the USA. An affiliate member of the PerimeterInstitute for Theoretical Physics, he has served a variety of academic and scientific advisory boards, including the Ontario College of Graduate Studies, the founding board of the Institute for Quantum Computing, and the Ontario Photonics Consortium.

He is enthusiastic about physics in terms of both its challenging concepts and its applications for the benefit of society, and looks forward to communicating this enthusiasm to a broad audience.

He's an awesome guy but man is he ever ugly. Also he continously implies that he makes no money and has no life. He's stated that as math and physics students, we've all sworn vows of both poverty and chastity. Today he asked us, "Who here wants to know the mysteries of the universe?" most people put up their hands. Then he asked "Who here wants to get a job?" and again most people put up their hands. So then he said, "Unfortunately, it's impossible to do both."

[Hauskaz]

He looks really familiar, but I don't know who I'm thinking of. Some kind of family friend or something.

[hellomeow]

Ok he is officially my hero right now. Half of our lesson involved solving equations based on the intial velocity in the x and y axis that he gave the melon, and also watching the video itself. Then to prove that the values for velocity in x and y axis were accurate, he showed us this distance tracking program he used to analyze the position of the melon over various time intervals from a video he made. Complete with parabolic curves and further analysis of the derivatives.

Robert Mann makes me want to be a physicist.

[Hauskaz]

That's fucking awesome.

[elbow unit]

god dammnit why are all the cool profs in Waterloo? All of mine are awkward and don't really help you. All except my English teacher, he's awesome