Our Story
Science Had No Soul
Cofounder and CEO, Michael Finnegan, Ph.D., tells the story of QuantumCourses
"For those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.”
Danish Scientist, Neils Bohr said this decades after 1913, the year when he proclaimed to the world that electrons, inside atoms, don't move smoothly through space, but rather jump around with no trace and no trail, as if by magic.
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How did Bohr arrive at this picture of the atom? Well, the answer to this question IS the founding ideal of QuantumCourse, Inc.
Marie Montessori
Paulo Freire
You see, I used to be a public school science teacher, frustrated by the obstacles to delivering simple, fun, authentic science.
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The school board and principal mandated I teach science to a standardized test.
But this would mean teaching boring content, to be memorized, and forgotten.
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It would mean students don't dive into why earthquakes, fire, breathing, the striking similarity of primates on different continents, shooting stars, and .. and let me get technical here for a second .. the beautiful spectral emission lines (see the QC logo!) of the chemical elements ...
... On this last thing, the spectral lines, in the middle of the 19th century, physicists noticed that each element, when energized, emitted a unique series of light bands. There was zero theoretical explanation for this fascinating phenomenon.
Curiosity about this mystifying phenomenon drove a half century of systematic explorations! … And out comes quantum physics AND… an idea of a summer camp program!
That’s right, in 2012, I created a series of science lessons, mirroring the investigations from the 1850’s to 1913, which allowed students to discover their own way to the quantum revolution.
On Friday of that weeklong summer camp, students approached me saying, “Michael, does this mean the electron can be here and here, but not in between. It just jumps magically from spot to spot?” 12 kids discovered quantum physics, with minimal guidance.
99 years after Neils Bohr published his theory, a company was born modeled on the way he and all the great scientists and mathematicians from history did what they did.
