W. Scott McCullough

"Every teacher needs subject competence and a firm general pedagogical foundation. But every teacher also needs specialized knowledge specific to teaching their subject area. Hardly any teacher education program devotes anything like enough time to this “in between” area – and this is where all the fun is." — Dr. Scott McCullough

Biography

W. Scott McCullough, prior to coming to IWU, lived in the Republic of Yemen where he taught physics and worked in educational development. He is married to Anna, his wife of 35 years, and they have 4 mostly adult children. He enjoys reading and speaking Arabic, running and playing Ultimate, which he hopes to play professionally when he grows up.

Research

My research is in computational biophysics. I use the method of molecular dynamics to simulate the behavior of large collections of biomolecules. My current focus is the structure of pure lipid membranes. I work with Joe Hoffert of the Computer Science department and regularly communicate with biologists and biophysicists at IWU and other universities.

To carry out these simulations, the department has a Linux workstation with dual 8-core Intel v3 Haswell processors, two Nvidia GTX-980 graphical processing units and 128 GBytes of RAM. 

Physics and Math Education Interests

I am interested in using technology to enhance student achievement and developing hands-on real-life projects for teachers to use in their classroom. Specifically, I am passionate about using GeoGebra to create teaching and learning resources.

High Speed Videos 

HIGH-FRAME-RATE VIDEO FOR VIDEO ANALYSIS OF MOTION

High-speed videos of motion taken with our new Edgertronic camera. Global shutter and high frame rate make this an incredible tool to link dynamics and kinematics.

Free-fall Tennis Ball: 1 m drop, 500 fps. Right click and “save as” to download. Info

Tennis Ball Bounce: 5000 fps close up, diameter 6.70 cm. Info

Basketball Bounce: 3000 fps close up, diameter 24.0 cm. Info

Blinking Eye: 2000 fps close up. Info

Ultimate Disc Throw: 1000 fps forehand disc throw. Diameter of Discraft Disc 27.3 cm. Info

Ultimate Disc Front: 1000 fps forehand disc front view. Diameter of disc 27.3 cm. Info

  *This work by W. Scott McCullough, Physics Department, Indiana Wesleyan University, taken with Edgertronic high speed camera is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Degrees

• Ph.D. - Theoretical Physics
  1988, Purdue University
• M.Sc.
  1985, Purdue University
• B.A. - Mathematics; Physics
  1981, Emporia State University