What distinguishes a truly excellent teacher from a competent one is undoubtedly passion; passion for the subject as well as passion in communicating the ideas and concepts to others. The most basic underlying ingredient in my teaching philosophy is therefore passion; in other words, being passionate about physics and communicating physics concepts to students. Sometimes, this communication is non-verbal, as passion is highly infectious and can be easily be caught by students.

My strategy is to use real-life everyday experiences to explain physics concepts and laws. After all, true learning only occurs when the student is able to pin new concepts onto his current framework of understanding and experience. In large lecture classes, I make every effort to do a demonstration experiment, albeit a simple one, at each lecture. Demonstrations also serve to break the monotony in the lecture, and stimulate student questioning and discussion. A lecture is to me an occasion not so much to present facts (which can easily be read up), but a performance with the quality of persuasion and engagement. This is especially true for a large class (my first year physics classes ranged from 100 to 400 students).