Syd Rowley's Zeroth Law

Geoffrey Boycott should open the batting for England. There was very little else to be said, and I suspect no arguments would have been heard against it.

Syd Rowley taught physics at the Fitzwimarc School in Rayleigh in the 70s and 80s.

Syd Rowley's Page Counting Ritual

There was always a time in every class where you'd finally got to the last page of your exercise book, and needed a new one. Whilst with some teachers there would always be some kind of inspection - to make sure you really had got to the last page - in his class the testing was, inevitably, far more rigorous.

He would, in front of the class, count the pages to make sure you hadn't torn any out. And woe betide if you had.

Syd Rowley's Trick Questions

A favourite ploy was to ask trick questions to encourage the class to think around problems. Some of them could be quite strange though and often left the class looking somewhat bemused. One classic was:

"I was out in Southend at the weekend. It was a lovely day so I took a stroll along the pier. Whilst there, I witnessed a young mum push her pram off the end of the pier, with her baby in it. What did I do?"

There were the inevitable looks of shock and disbelief and obvious suggestions such as ringing the police and even jumping into the Thames to effect a rescue. However:

"I did nothing. Why?"

This challenge was accompanied by the trademark hard stare, which was returned with a class of blank looks.

"Well, I haven't told you which end of the pier it was, have I?"

Syd Rowley's "It's not Volts that Kill"

"It's not Volts what kills. It's Amps!" was possibly one of the most loudly uttered phrases in his classes. He was often frustrated by signs which highlighted risks such as "Danger: 400V" or "Extreme hazard: 500kV - risk of electric shock"

Of course the voltage would not kill you, the rather large electrical current which would flow through you due to your very low resistance, should you decide to foolishly make a connection to earth with your body, would be the thing which would do for you.

Syd Rowley's Dirty Big Diagram

Exam preparation was a key element of most lessons, as exams were after all the final "end game" for your O levels. One of the most important approaches was always to define the problem and your solution to it as clearly as possible, so that the marker would understand what your thinking was. Not only should you draw a diagram, but it should be big enough to be understood easily.

By exam time, any member of the class could be singled out and expected to answer the question "what do you do first" with the standard response "Draw a Dirty Big Diagram".

Syd Rowley's "It's not Enough to Know"

One technique he often deployed in round the classroom "point and test" scenarios was to ask you a question and when you answered it correctly stare at you as if you had somehow not quite got it completely right. At which point you invariably uttered "um" and became vulnerable to further quizzing.

The point here, as he would explain, was that your belief in your own knowledge should be strong enough to stand up to further scrutiny, and hence his summary:

"It's not enough to know. You have to know that you know".

Syd Rowley's Elephants

One of the most common class questions in his physics lessons was the numerical calculation of a physical quantity. A favourite was a current or resistance calculation using Ohm's Law. You could, as ever, be singled out for an answer, but giving the numerical answer was not enough, and quite rightly.

The correct units had to be specified as well, for without them the answer was meaningless. An answer of "20" would be met with a hard stare, and the answer repeated back at you. "20. 20 what? 20 elephants?" and the longer the class took to catch on to this and answer properly, the more emphasis (volume) he placed on the word "elephants".

Hence "elephants" became synonymous with missing units in pretty much every question.

Syd Rowley's Seven

I recently stumbled on this post by Colin Howey which started a couple of us thinking about some of Syd's other little sayings. I'll be mentioning some of these in future posts, but for now enjoy Colin's memory of something I'm sure I heard Syd talk about in one of my classes.

Syd Rowley taught physics at the Fitzwimarc School in Rayleigh in the 70s and 80s.