Teaching

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."
—Shunryū Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

My teaching philosophy. Physics is, above all, an activity. The best way to teach or learn it is to do it together. In my teaching, I strive to adopt the beginner's perspective, strip away jargon, and foster an inclusive community and a collaborative spirit. I emphasize dialogue and the agency of the class, and I exhibit generosity and compassion while pushing my students to hold themselves to high standards of rigor and depth. For more about the principles and practices that inform my teaching, here is my Teaching Philosophy Statement.

Outreach. I have been a graduate member of UDIP (Undergraduate Diversity and Inclusion in Physics) at UCSB. I've also mentored undergraduates and participated in UCSB's Physics Circus, which brings physics demonstrations to younger and more diverse audiences.

Courses I have taught. I have been a Teaching Assistant for nearly two dozen undergraduate physics courses at UCSB. Here are all of them. In the summer of 2022, I taught a course on Newtonian mechanics and special relativity as the instructor. Here is the syllabus.

Teaching Materials

Miscellaneous materials I have written to supplement the courses I TA'd

• The light-cone frame: an exploration of the extreme relativistic limit.
• How to throw a frisbee: a slow-motion demonstration of the rotational dynamics of an axisymmetric body, with precession and nutation on display.
• Black hole thermodynamics: a series of problems for a thermodynamics course.
• The double well (problems, solutions): a series of exercises in quantum mechanics, covering perturbation theory, variational methods, and the WKB approximation.
• Entanglement and entropy: a review of quantum entanglement and an introduction to mixed states, density matrices, and von Neumann entropy.

Teaching Evaluations

Excerpts from anonymous testimonials of students I have TA'd

"I have had David as a TA for 4 classes and he is by far the best TA I have had throughout college. His command of the material is impressive and goes far beyond any minute detail discussed in any of the classes. He is powerful in his ability to explain topics to a range of listeners and have them each understand. His preparation, accessibility, and constant drive to go above and beyond make him a powerful learning asset to all those who are blessed to have him in their course. Beyond that he is personable, funny, and truly enjoyable to talk to, and therefore spreads his enthusiasm for physics to all that he teaches."

"He always provided excellent notes and summaries of all the material we covered. He responded quickly and always provided clear explanations. Even in our online format he did demonstrations and made them interactive. He wrote his own additional problems when they weren't provided by the professor. He always had a smile and was very enthusiastic and passionate. His sections were the only online sections that I actively looked forward to. I learned a lot more from him than from the professor."

"Best TA I will ever have. He is the most inspired and inspiring TA I have ever come across and is so well informed. He often answers questions with a unified view of physics and mathematics that is simply breathtaking. He is very generous with his time and kind as well. He can not only eloquently describe a solution or method, but also talk about the history of the methods in use and how they came to be in their time, deepening one’s perspective and awe in striving to understand what is."