PHYSICS AND POETRY

On being asked, I can show,

Physics that I know,

From the principles of atoms to explosion,

And wheels that are in a circular motion,

Black holes to Space-time,

You will see how the branches of physics rhyme,

Cramming formulas is never the correct scheme,

Make physics a part of your dream,

Dive into this ocean,

“Physics is not boring!” let's make this a general notion. 

What about deriving Newton's laws through poetry? Rhyming words to simplify the understanding of physics. In my class, my students would explore the insights of magnetism, gravity, quantum mechanics, nuclear, and cosmology in a poetic way. I began to connect these two domains, literature and science, while I was finding difficulty in understanding my grade 12 topic: Faraday And Henry Experiments. I took the pen and wrote a poem that explained that phenomenon. I thought the concept, which was so long and complicated to understand, became simple by just using verses. This methodology of mine can help the students to understand and make the so-called haunted physics looks like a fairytale. 

Physics is the poetry of the world in my viewpoint. Everything rhymes as much as the poems do. Stars twinkling, clock ticking, pendulum oscillating, and many more processes have a rhythm and are just metaphorically represented through formulas. Why not make the understanding of Physics easy for all. Students never forget the poems they learned in the nursery even after many years but forget the physics lessons they took just an hour ago. 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star', the poem we all learned in childhood, can be used for Physics by making its extension to explain the formation of the stars and the Big Bang Theory. 

Are there some more physics lessons and concepts that we can use the poetic devices and license to raise? In my class, we will have an open-ended discussion on how various problems of physics can be solved using logic with a touch of poetry. Can we make a unified theory of physics sound like Ozymandias? Using poetic devices, can we understand the mysterious nature of gravity? Or write a sonnet on what the matter is made up of? Cramming the formulas half-heartedly never helped anyone in the long run. It needs to be embedded. To learn it, we need to live with it.