physics

Lou Bloomfield

Lou Bloomfield is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lou Bloomfield rather than just read about it. In short: Louis Aub Bloomfield (born October 11, 1956) is a physics professor at the University of Virginia. Bloomfield became a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1994 for his work on cluster magnetism and has received several other significant honors.

Key takeaways

Lou Bloomfield belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lou Bloomfield to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lou Bloomfield from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Louis Aub Bloomfield (born October 11, 1956) is a physics professor at the University of Virginia. Bloomfield became a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1994 for his work on cluster magnetism and has received several other significant honors. Bloomfield is often referenced as a physics authority in major news publications.

Early life Bloomfield was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 11, 1956. He lived in Cleveland, Ohio and Urbana, Illinois, graduating from Urbana High School in 1974. Bloomfield attended Amherst College, winning the LeRoy Apker Award in his senior year. He was most interested in medicine after graduating from Amherst, but his physics professors pressured him to apply to three prestigious physics programs in addition to taking the MCAT and applying to medical school at Johns Hopkins University. Bloomfield was accepted into all three physics programs and medical school, but decided to go into physics after asking himself whether he really wanted to be "cutting apart dead bodies in Baltimore." Bloomfield attended Stanford University for physics, receiving his Ph.D. from the school in 1983. He began teaching at the University of Virginia two years later after a postdoc at Bell Laboratories.

Career Bloomfield began teaching physics at the University of Virginia in 1985. He developed and began teaching a course entitled "How Things Work" in 1991, which he has since taught to thousands of students. This course's success, along with the publishing of a textbook on the subject under the same title, has led to Bloomfield doing a number of interviews and explanations as a guest for large news companies. Bloomfield's explanations of everyday activities and questions have been featured in USA Today, The Huffington Post, and The Washington Post, where he did a series of explanations on sports during the 2016 Summer Olympics. Bloomfield worked with UVA to create an instructional video on social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inventions Bloomfield has expertise in the field of borosilicate materials and has developed multiple products using this technology. Borosilicates are viscoelastic (a portmanteau of "viscous" and "elastic"), a property that is useful in multiple areas. These inventions include Vistik, a material designed for use in stabilizing wobbly tables, and EarJellies, which are earplugs made from a similar material.

See also List of American Physical Society Fellows

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lou Bloomfield

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lou Bloomfield claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lou Bloomfield before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lou Bloomfield ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lou Bloomfield

In research: Lou Bloomfield appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lou Bloomfield in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lou Bloomfield is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1956 births, 21st-century American physicists, Amherst College alumni, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lou Bloomfield outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lou Bloomfield in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lou Bloomfield means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lou Bloomfield out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lou Bloomfield in simple terms?

Why does Lou Bloomfield matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lou Bloomfield?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lou Bloomfield.