There are people who have traveled the world, and then there’s Eli Aghassi, LCHS’s new physics teacher, who’s been to 30 countries and lived in four.
“I’ve gotten to do a lot of different things,” he said.
Mr. Aghassi started his career in marine science, but decided to leave that field after two deployments on ships.
“I decided that it just wasn’t the life I wanted to lead,” he explained. “I mean, it’s an experience, and you get to see a lot of things you wouldn’t have otherwise seen, but living for three or four months on a boat grates on you after a while.”
During college, he also worked on nuclear physics projects in Sweden and Germany. As the least experienced scientist, he’d have the midnight to 8 A.M. shift, finding himself eating dinner at eight in the morning and going to bed two or three hours later in order to wake up at eleven at night.
As the father of a one-year-old, Mr. Aghassi doesn’t have a ton of time for hobbies. But before, he was quite the daredevil, enjoying scuba diving, rock climbing, and even going bungee jumping. But perhaps what his students find most exciting is the fact that he actually ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
“I had a friend who was living in Spain, and I went to visit him, and we decided to go up to Pamplona and run with the bulls,” he explained. “I didn’t run with the bulls very far– the route is like two miles long and I was maybe there for five feet, but still.”
But even with all these fascinating life experiences, Mr. Aghassi finds teaching physics to be his favorite job. He describes it as the most important subject to learn, giving him a sort of ultimate responsibility.
“Physics explains how the universe works,” he said. “Chemistry is just the physics of small things, and biology is just the physics of living things. English is used to describe physics, and history is a great way to discover the physics that came before us. In the end, it’s all physics!”
