The thumbnail features an early illustration of Steve back in 2020
Here we have answers from Mr. Edgren the goof lord himself (or self-proclaimed King of Physics since 2014). I hope you know him somehow, but if you don’t… I don’t know what to tell you then, but maybe you’ll just have to take Physics at some point (since he’s no longer teaching IGS or PS…). I’m not going to spend my time writing an introduction.
Of course, I can’t like, actually force you to sit at your computer and write a whole paragraph if you chose to revolt. Whatever. But perhaps describe your TPS Physics journey as a student–the most memorable parts and why that led you to teach it eventually.
Mr. Edgren: I am assuming that you will take my statements horribly out of context and make me sound like a raving lunatic, but ah well, anything for clay.
It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that my parents enrolled me in my first TPS class. It was Grammar Review, a semester-long intensive grammar course. I remember it like it was yesterday… with a mix of fondness and abject horror. But boy, oh boy, it learned me some grammar. I don’t make no grammar mistake anymore. That’s for surely.
The following year I hornswoggled my naïve parentals into letting me skip Chemistry and go straight to Physics. This seemed like a great idea at the time, and it didn’t come back to bite me for nearly six years. My physics teacher was the inestimable Dr. Justin Myrick, a prince among fellows. The sands of time blur all memories, and often they leave the strangest things sticking out. Almost every class would coincide with the garbage truck picking up Dr. Myrick’s trash, and he would drop whatever he was saying and holler, “Whoaaa! I feel a huuuge gravitational pull! It must be the garbage truck again!” He also would always draw his cross product sign as a greatly exaggerated x, a habit I have adopted in his honor. He was a wonderful teacher and my love for physics grew under his tutelage. I took advanced physics with him the following year as well, and that was also a joy, though I realized part-way through that it was basically the exact same course as normal physics, just we didn’t get to ignore friction anymore. Harumph.
I had other TPS adventures in those three years. Though I was the oldest of my siblings, I was following in the footsteps of my illustrious elder cousins who had been taking TPS classes for years. They were all brilliant and heavily involved in Forums and the Cracked Pot (the clay of yesteryear), and I usually made it through half the semester before my teachers realized I wasn’t one of them. Ha! I also have very fond memories of Mrs. Crosby’s AP Calculus course, though I chickened out of taking the AP exam. Hopefully she forgives me someday. My literature and composition courses were excellent and challenging, and I enjoyed them immensely, but physics continued to be what excited and intrigued me most.
Then I trundled off to college and signed up for four more years of the stuff. And now here I am, wrapping up year seven of teaching physics, and I still haven’t grown tired of peering into the mysteries of creation, spelunking into the cavernous depths on ropes made of mathematical formulas and trying to avoid being eaten by mysteries too big for me. So I keep doing that, and I bring up neat things that I find and spread them out on a table and show them to young folk with the goal of getting them to say, more or less, “Whoa! God made that. Nifty!” That’s what Dr. Myrick did for me, and so did all my professors in college. Education is just passing on what you’ve received, I suppose.
What are some of the funniest things that happened throughout your years of teaching at TPS?
Mr. Edgren: It isn’t easy to prank your online teacher. And that’s why it doesn’t happen very often. But a certain cadre of hooligans (who shall remain nameless) managed it. Unbeknownst to me, they had all conspired through some forbidden communication channel that they made (against my instructions, let the record show) to all give me the same WRONG answer to a practice problem. So near the end of class, one of them oh-so-sweetly expressed the sentiment that she didn’t feel she fully understood the concept I was belaboring and asked if we could work a practice problem. This should have been a cold, hard, screeching warning, but I was a simpleton at the time. So I gave them a problem and instructed them to put their answers in the moderator chat. After an appropriate interval, the chat filled with the same answer: 56.34.
Now, full disclosure, I was not perhaps in the habit of working all these problems out for myself in advance. I did a quick estimation of the problem and no red flags were raised. It was a perfectly reasonable magnitude, and I swallowed their false answer hook, line, and sinker. I commented approvingly on their consistency as a class, and even went so far as to say, “…and this makes sense because…” as I went on to explain the problem. Then the original instigator spilled the beans, and much hilarity ensued. For them. I was, as they say, flabbergasted.
Gradually the depth and scale of their deception impressed itself upon my slow wits. I realized that swift and decisive revenge was the only way forward. In their glee, I surmised, they had probably not actually worked out the problem at hand. So I ruthlessly opened a conspirator’s mic and asked him to solve the problem. He drowned in a sea of confusion. Undeterred, I did the same to another, and she too sunk to the bottom. Mercilessly, I sent two more down to the briny deep before the fifth student managed to solve the problem.
But this was to be only the beginning of my revenge, I told them. My honor was in no way satisfied, and we ended class in general fear of each other’s reprisals.
And then, as the good Lord would have it, the next day I was unexpectedly handed a package addressed to me and signed by that offending section of students. It turns out that they had also conspired to give me a Christmas present that had arrived two months late. It included kind and heartfelt notes thanking me for teaching them and full of appreciation for the course.
My cold, revenge-minded heart melted immediately, and I post-haste wrote them a message to say that all was forgiven and we would bury the hatchet and live in harmonious union once again.
What’s up with the pumpkin coffee and virtual nerf guns?
Mr. Edgren: Perhaps I am too lenient a teacher. I don’t know. Things can get out of hand at times, though. There was one semester where the boys in one of my middle school courses had an ongoing nerf battle before, after, and sometimes during class. You might wonder how they managed a nerf battle in an online course. I confess that I was impressed in spite of myself, and I fear I cannot describe it to you adequately. Regarding the pumpkin coffee, I have never again made such a grave blunder as that fateful morning. Whew.
Another ever-present feature in many of my classes is the continuing adventures of Steve and Cuthbert and Stu the Implausible. What I intended to be merely place-holder names for test questions have turned into nearly fully-fledged characters with lives and stories of their own. I have received artwork depicting these persons in all their scientific glory.
The point of all this is that I am profoundly grateful for my TPS experience, both as a student and as a teacher. The education I received was a great blessing, and the students I get to teach now are about the best you’ll find anywhere. They are creative and fun-loving and devious (in the right way) and bright and attentive. They laugh at my jokes and put up with my rabbit trails, and I think they’re a top-notch bunch of folks. There you have it.
Why such enthusiasm with Physics? Physics is the WORST…
Uhh it turns out that Mr. Edgren was speechless when it came to this question… I suppose he agrees that physics is the worst.
Here are some definitely-NOT-out-of-context quotes from Mr. Edgren:
“If you’re that type of person… you’d probably have to rethink how your life is working.”
“NO NO NO we’re not REALLY dismissed! That was a JOKE! Ahh.. They only listen SELECTIVELY… these students…”
“I would assume that… I would assume that I don’t know.”
“It’s all fun and games until I choose to flunk you all.”
“However… If we just sorta ignore the fact that we have NO IDEA of what we’re talking about, we can actually talk about it, in some interesting ways.”
“Like, why is this the way it is? Because I said so, yes. And I am actually the king of physics, and everyone must do what I say. Yup, inherited it back in 2014.”
“Oh dear, GREAT… I forgot that this was the class that writes down everything I say.”
“So, what’s my rule of thumb about that? If your handwriting is bad enough, they can’t tell you that you can’t spell. But it doesn’t work when I’m typing things.”
“Yeah, like a theme park. You have to stand in line for the lemonade, you gotta stand in line for the ice cream, you gotta stand in line for the roller coaster so you can throw up. Ughhh, it’s a pain.”
“What are we gonna do in class today?… I don’t know…”
Thank you for the patience to read through 1650 words. More counting this sentence, actually.
Credits to Mr. Edgren and PS#1 (2023)