743 ratings
Physics nerd
Liam B.
I make physics problems tell a story before the math starts.
Education
University of Michigan
B.S. in Physics, minor in Aerospace Engineering
Hometown
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
A note from Liam
“I don't want you to memorize F = ma — I want you to feel the engine push you into the seat.”
Every physics problem is a short story about where the energy and momentum go, so we draw the picture first and reach for the formula last. Once the diagram is right, the algebra is just bookkeeping, and bookkeeping never scared anybody.
Liam’s story
Liam grew up in Pittsburgh's Brookline neighborhood, where his dad worked maintenance at the Allegheny Observatory and would sneak him in after closing to look through the 30-inch Thaw refractor. He nearly washed out of Michigan's intro mechanics sequence — a 61 on his first Physics 140 midterm — until a TA made him draw every free-body diagram before touching an equation. He finished that term with the top score on the final and spent the next three summers in Michigan's high-power rocketry club, certifying Level 2 on a homebuilt I-motor bird that hit 4,300 feet over a soy field outside Ann Arbor. He still runs a backyard astrophotography rig in the dark-sky pockets north of the city, stacking 200 sub-exposures to pull the Pinwheel Galaxy out of light-polluted skies. He's logged 4,000+ tutoring hours and keeps a whiteboard photo of every student's first correct free-body diagram.
What students say
4.9 ★ · 743 ratings
“I scored a 2 on my first AP Physics 1 practice exam and a 5 on the real one in May. Liam wouldn't let me write a single number until I'd sketched the forces, which drove me crazy for two weeks and then suddenly made rotational motion obvious. My free-response on the torque question went from 4/12 to 11/12.”
“Daniel was sitting at a 68 after first-semester mechanics and we were genuinely worried. Liam went back to momentum and energy bar charts from scratch instead of just drilling problems. Daniel finished the year at 94 and placed out of intro physics at Pitt. I don't write reviews and I'm writing this one.”
“E&M was wrecking me — I had a 72 on the first unit test and no idea why. Liam explained Gauss's law using how he aligns his telescope mount, and flux finally clicked when I heard it from someone who actually points the thing at the sky. Next test was a 96. Took off a half-star only because he kept running us five minutes over.”