--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip>
>
> I once had the pleasure of being a student of UP PhD guy named Dr. Abaya.
Was this Efren Abaya? Wasn't he one of only a handful of summa-cum-laude grads the
UP EE dept. ever had? IIRC, I had him as a teacher too, just when he got back
from his post-doc in Stanford? MIT? (one of his accomplishments was he finished
his masters and PhD in 3 years so he did 1 more year of post-doc work because
he had a 4-year scholarship, I think), and his class (EE71) was pretty
memorable to me because it was probably the only uno I ever got in that dang dept.
ever...
> He was teaching at that time Digital Communications and one occasion he
> was teaching directly off the ORIGINAL 1940s(?) paper by Nyquist (Nyquist
> Theorem). This made a big impression on me because this was the only
> time in my whole college life that somebody went to the pain of getting
> the ORIGINAL research paper instead of relying on the "usual" books.
This way of using the ORIGINAL SOURCES is very much in the tradition of the really
good
american universities. I had the unique opportunity about two years ago to sit-in
(more like snuck-in ;^)) a Harvard physics introductory class for non-physics majors
and the prof read parts of "Newton's Principia" (he had the facsimile displayed on the
overhead projector) as they were discussing Newton's Law of Gravity.
He also shared some of his personal slides when he visited Cambridge University
in England where Newton became the Lucasian professor there (same prof. chair Stephen
Hawking is holding now). He also talked about the gossip and intrigues among Newton's
fellow scientists in Cambridge during Newton's time... Imagine a physics class where
you
talk about Newton as a 'real' person (its just that he died a longtime ago) -- it
just makes physics more "alive"...
Even cooler, as a demo of Newton's 3rd Law, he put a stool on on a RadioFlyer wagon
and
sat on the stool with a fire extinguisher in his hand (one of those portable CO2
types).
At the end of his lecture, he turned on the fire extinguisher and literally zoomed
out of the room while his assistant opened the door just in time for him to exit
out...
a very clear and graphic demonstration of action and reaction :^)
Butch Landingin
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