Changing the Game

Symmetry Magazine did a beautiful job illustrating this profile about a gifted college football player who changed his career direction to physics. Writing the story changed up my game as well - It was the first time I took on physics as a subject matter. Dr. Rock made it easy and fun, making it clear that the education path was a great choice.

“Keep your eye on the ball,” was the stock advice Willie Rockward heard from football coaches as a teenager in the early 1980s in Houma, Louisiana, just south of New Orleans. But Rockward, who had a talent for both sports and physics, would come to know better. “You just need to see the first part of the projectile,” he says. “Once you know the trajectory of the ball, it’s not going to change.” On the football field, calculating the trajectory of the ball gives a receiver a few critical seconds to evaluate the oncoming defensive team. In Rockward’s life, calculating his own trajectory led him out of sports and into science. Read more.