Ray C. Jones Emeritus Professor of Physics
Home (use these):
rayceejay@classicnet.net 580-774-0950
RR 5 Box 112 B, Weatherford, OK 73096
Office (not checked as often): Ray.Jones@swosu.edu
580-774-3106 Physics, SWOSU, Weatherford,
OK 73096
In 2001 I retired from teaching physics and astronomy
after 32 years at Southwestern. During that time I taught almost every
course that the department offered. Essentially every semester I taught
one section of the freshman-level, general-education astronomy course.
I have always liked astronomy, and this course gave me a chance to interact
with the more general students. In 1978 I designed, did some of the construction,
and oversaw the remainder of the construction of our astronomical observatory
located about 4 miles northeast of campus. The current plan is to relocate
the observatory to a darker site about 7 miles south of Weatherford. I will
probably be involved in this project. I continued to teach the Modern Physics
Lab after I retired. Since 1995 I have been involved in modernizing experiments
in that lab which had very significant problems. These Nobel-Prize-winning
experiments were: The Millikan Oil Drop Experiment, which showed that electric
charge only exists in one size of bundle, or quanta, and also measured the
magnitude of this fundamental charge; the Photoelectric Experiment, which
Einstein explained to win his Noble Prize; and the Franck Hertz Experiment,
another quantum experiment that showed that even the kinetic energy of moving
electrons is absorbed by atoms in discrete amounts. My work on the Millikan
Oil Drop Experiment is one of my more significant contributions to the teaching
of physics (American Journal of Physics, November 1995).
I have recently completed Relativity Revealed,
a Concrete Approach You Can Understand, a book for the general reader
which is an expanded treatment from two series of seminars for the public
that I developed and presented first in 1984 and then an expanded version
in 2003. My experience teaching astronomy was a great help in knowing how
to explain relativity at this level. I am currently searching for a publisher.
A sample of the book is available in pdf format for free download by clicking
on the link below.
Relativity Revealed, a sample