Like many physics professors, David Meltzer thought he was a good teacher. He was dedicated to helping students, and he believed he gave very good lectures. Yet he couldn’t help but notice that despite his efforts, his students just weren’t learning what he wanted them to learn .

Rather than just continuing to lecture in the same old way, Meltzer sought to find out why his students had so much trouble. “I began to read studies, and I found my experience was common and there were reasons for it, and there were ways one could address the problem,” he says. So Meltzer familiarized himself with the latest research in physics education, and he developed a new way of teaching.

Now, in professor Meltzer’s physics classes at Iowa State University , students don’t just sit back and listen, they are actively engaged in thinking, answering questions, and discussing tough concepts with their fellow students.

Instead of a traditional lecture where the professor talks for an hour and then asks if there are any questions, Meltzer often gives a short overview or introduction to a topic, then poses a series of multiple choice questions, which students answer by holding up a flashcard with a letter. The students usually have a few minutes to think over their answers and discuss with fellow students before holding up their flashcards. If the class is split, Meltzer will encourage a debate, and then try to guide the students to the correct answer. This technique, which Meltzer uses even in large lecture classes, not only keeps the students actively engaged, it lets the lecturer know whether the students are grasping the concepts he’s trying to explain.

Meltzer began his career in condensed matter physics, and then directed his research into physics education. But he says he has long been interested in teaching and learning. Like many physics students, he was often unsatisfied with the instruction he received. “I was a frustrated student,” he says, “I felt it could be done better and clearer. After you learn the material, you feel you could teach it better. I later learned that it’s not so easy,” he says.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree in physics from Columbia University in 1974, Meltzer completed a PhD in condensed matter theory at SUNY Stony Brook in 1985. For several years he conducted research in condensed matter physics at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, and then at University of Florida. In 1991, he took a position at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana, where his interests began to shift towards teaching. So after finishing up some work on condensed matter theory, Meltzer decided to focus his research on physics education.

In 1998 he moved to Iowa State University, and set up a physics education research group there. In addition to developing the flashcard system, Meltzer investigates student understanding of a variety of physics topics. For instance, Meltzer and his colleagues recently studied some of the difficulties students have with thermodynamics, and now he’s working on developing materials to help students better understand these concepts.

Aside from his physics and physics education research, Meltzer has studied the physiology of weight lifting, which also happens to be a hobby of his. In one study, he investigated the question of how an athlete’s body weight affects the rate of decline in performance with age. “Do heavier guys go down quicker? As best as I can tell, my answer was no, the rate of decline was the same, whether you were light or heavy,” says Meltzer. This research led to publication in a prestigious sports science journal. “It’s actually some of my most widely cited work,” laughs Meltzer.

It’s also been relevant to him, as he trains for and competes in international masters Olympic-style weight lifting competitions. He has won medals in several recent World Masters Championships.

In addition to competing, Meltzer sings the national anthems at these events. Meltzer can sing an amazing number of different national anthems, in the original language. He got started on this unusual hobby by watching the Olympics as a child. He liked the sports, but he also really enjoyed the anthems, he says. “I really liked the melodies. They just seemed to be attractive to me. I liked the sounds and I liked to sing,” he says.

Meltzer started learning to sing a few anthems, and he found that for some reason, it was something he could do well, and he liked doing it. Even better, people liked to hear him sing. So he decided to learn more and more of them. Soon the challenge became learning how to pronounce the words, says Meltzer. “How do you pronounce Mongolian? You can fake it, but it doesn’t sound good.”

Fortunately, the physics and academic community has enabled Meltzer to make connections with people from all over the world who have helped him learn to pronounce words in some of the most difficult and obscure languages. He now sings over 130 different anthems, and plans to learn more.

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