Writings

"I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on."
-Beryl Pfizer

Occasionally it's nice to take a break from writing physics equations and write in English, instead. The result is sometimes pleasing, though it doesn't always involve less math.


  • Once Upon a Math Class Dreary
  • A parody of Edgar Allan Poe's wonderful The Raven.


  • A Tragically Tragic Tragedy
  • When studying Shakespeare's Macbeth in high school, my English teacher issued her standard definition of a "tragedy," and gave the assignment of writing one of our own. My composition follows the letter of the law, if not the spirit...


  • My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold
  • Before reading a poem by Wordsworth, my English teacher (same one as above) gave the class five minutes to write our own poem beginning with the matching first line, "My heart leaps up when I behold." Wordsworth may have been in love with rainbows (see the full text of his poem), but physics is ever so much cooler.


    Three papers from MIT 8.225 (Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics in the 20th Century):

  • Classifying the Classicality of Classical Physics

  • Peer Pressure: Physicists' Cultural Context and their Examination of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics

  • Nazi Nukes: Why German Physicists Worked on Hitler's Bomb

  • Two poems from MIT 21W.756 (Reading and Writing Poems):

  • War Widow

  • Romeo and Juliet


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