Winter 1997

"Magic Mike" gets students turned on to physics

After more than 30 years as a college physics professor, Michael Moloney still finds simple pleasure in answering a myriad of problems.

Like, what's the square root of 99?

Or, how is the motion of two pendulums affected when connected by a string?

Or, how can Maple and Mathematica software help college and high school students better understand and appreciate physics?

Moloney's world seems to be in constant motion, much like his hands at the blackboard as he figures the solution to a mathematics problem.

"Sometimes, I'll admit, I mess up; Sometimes, I'm a few digits off; and sometimes, surprisingly, I'm right," says Moloney, laughing at his mathematical problem-solving ability.

It's an amazing ability that caused Rose-Hulman students to begin referring to Moloney as "Magic Mike" in the mid-1980s. Nobody has disputed the appropriateness of the moniker since!

"Mike is truly magical in the classroom," boasts colleague Art Western, head of Rose-Hulman's physics and applied optics department. "He has a pure energy and unbounded love for the teaching of physics."

So, it wasn't surprising that Moloney received the Dean's Outstanding Teacher Award in 1996 and has earned the respect of countless alumni — many he still knows on a first name basis — since joining the Rose-Hulman faculty full time in 1970. (He also was a member of the faculty from 1966-68.)

"My goal is for each student to 'learn physics,'" said Moloney, emphasizing the point during an interview in his office on the first floor of Moench Hall. "If there is some flavor in the course work, the students will learn . . . There's no harm in showing that physics is fun and interesting."

That's why he helped develop the Physics Resource Packets Project, a guide to using symbolic algebra programs (Maple and Mathematica) and/or spreadsheets in teaching physics. A Packet contains a helpful assortment of sample calculations — from simple to more advanced — along with classroom ideas.

The Packets Project, formulated through a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation, is part of a plan known as WebPhysics, which makes physics curriculum materials accessible to college and high school teachers on the World Wide Web. Teachers from throughout the country utilize the new tools in their classrooms.

Moloney was also part of the five-faculty team that developed the unique first-year integrated curriculum for science and engineering education at Rose-Hulman. Now in its eighth year, the program is used as a model by other colleges for getting first-year students involved in the exchange and application of scientific ideas and engineering principles. In the classroom, Moloney wants to ensure that students get the most out of each lecture or laboratory period. It's a process he refers to as "constructive education."

"You can't learn to ride a bicycle by watching someone else ride a bicycle. Conversely, you learn physics by thinking, then drawing sketches, then writing out and solving the equations," Moloney says, admitting his teaching techniques have mellowed "a little" over the years. Moloney nurtured an appreciation for physics after studying chemistry at the Illinois Institute of Technology. (He earned a bachelor's degree in 1958.) After a three-year stint as an electronics officer in the U.S. Navy, he studied physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for one year before earning his doctorate in physics from the University of Maryland in 1966. He then started his first teaching stint at Rose Polytechnic Institute.

"If I had known 30 years ago what I know now, I would have taught then the way I'm teaching now. The end result is always, 'Are the students learning?' I think they are learning more today," says Moloney, an avid reader of retrospectives on World War II and breakthroughs in science and medical research. "I'm not a lecturer. I'm a 'doer' and a thinker. I'd like the students to realize that all physics is fun and interesting."

Like magic.

— by Dale Long