Lawrence B. Weinstein
Professor of Physics
Old Dominion University
Lawrence Weinstein is a Professor of Physics at Old Dominion University. Since joining the ODU faculty in 1992, Dr. Weinstein has been the recipient of numerous accolades for his research and teaching, including election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the ODU College of Sciences Faculty Excellence Award, the College of Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award (2006), the Old Dominion University Teaching with Technology Award (2007), and designation as a University Professor (2007), which is the highest honor that the University bestows on a faculty member for teaching excellence.
Dr. Weinstein is internationally recognized for his work in electron scattering nuclear physics. He was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004 “for his original contributions to the study of nucleon-nucleon correlations in nuclei.” Dr. Weinstein used the CLAS detector at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to perform the first measurement of the momentum distributions of correlated pairs of nucleons (protons and neutrons). He found that “nucleons are like people. When they are far apart they ignore each other, when they are close they can attract each other, but when they get too close, they repel each other violently.” He has co-authored over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals that have been cited over 3,000 times.
Dr. Weinstein has introduced many innovations to actively engage students in introductory physics classes. Most recently, he introduced SCALE-UP (Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate Programs) to ODU. In addition, Dr. Weinstein has created approximately 100 new lecture demonstrations (such as the flame tube and the seat of nails) to illustrate specific physical principles. He also introduced the Peer Instruction method, where students use a remote response system to answer conceptual questions such as predicting the results of a lecture demonstration.
Dr. Weinstein’s book, Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin (Princeton University Press, 2008), shows readers how to estimate almost anything, from nuclear waste to electric cars to the total length of pickles consumed each year. Guesstimation has been featured on the Wall Street Journal Numbers Guy blog, reviewed in Times Higher Education, Business Week, Games, Nature:Physics and Science, and is already in its third printing.
A former student, T. David Pyron, summed it up when he wrote, “Dr. Weinstein empowered me to learn. He was not only a good teacher, he was a good coach. He made time to work with his students until ‘they got it’ and to feed their interest in areas beyond the scope of required learning. Dr. Weinstein is an excellent example and role model for how professors can enable their students to learn, grow and achieve.”
