Bob in Fox Trot
This is a photo of me taken in the early '80s, when Bill Amend was a student at Amherst. You can judge for yourself whether the tough physics teacher in Fox Trot looks anything like me. I have had a serious beard at various times in my life, most recently from about 1070-1984, which includes Bill Amend's time here as a student.
The following sequence of six trips appeared one time for a whole week (Monday-Saturday). That was the first time that I realized that Bill might be using me. He certainly used his experiences as a student in a freshman lab course. My reference to "a little plagiarism here!" is a friendly comment on the fact that I recognize some of my own wording from some Ohm's Law lab notes that I wrote a long time ago.
Here's another one. The desk is recognizably mine - that is, cluttered with physics toys.
More -
The next one I really enjoyed, though it does not picture me nor mention my name. This came out while I was editor of AJP (American Journal of Physics), and I even reprinted it as an editorial: "Jason Fox Reads AJP!"
The next one I would hope doesn't refer to me or to my Amherst colleagues. It's a very pointed comment on how some of our physics labs come across to the students. Rather painful.
And this one was kind of a surprise! "Hunky Bobby Romer", indeed! This is from May, 2004. One of my former students commented, in an online chat group somewhere, that no one ever called me "Bobby" (true) and that I was never thought of as especially "hunky". (I can't really speak to the second comment, but my wife seems to think that "hunky" is not so far off the mark.)
