Mark Shroyer

Mark Shroyer is a assistant physics professor, on the tenure track. He has been at Knox since 2005 and received his PhD from Oregon State University in 1999. He is also officially the most badass of the current physics faculty. He enjoys peppermint schnapps in hot chocolate. He is well known for his love of basketball and talking. Shroyer is a prized commodity in the Knox Physics Department.

Research

Shroyer is in the process of building his Nuclear quadrupole double resonance apparatus in the basement of the physics wing.

Courses

Although he has only been here for two years, there are already several courses that Shroyer prefers teaching. These include

• PHYS-110 Mechanics
• PHYS-167 Astronomy
• PHYS-310 Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
• PHYS-312 Classical Dynamics
• PHYS-313 Classical Electromagnetism
• PHYS-346 Seminar in Theoretical Physics: Electrodynamics

Big Show

Shroyer, during a particularly vulnerable moment with his PHYS 313 class, told a sorrowful tale involving his childhood interactions with his younger brother. In his youth, Prof. Shroyer was somewhat of a would-be model rocket enthusiast, and so, one sunny day, he and his brother went out to a field, rockets in hand. Having meticulously set up the rocket on its wire launch pad, Shroyer pressed the electric ignition button only to have nothing happen. After some hours of failure, his brother just kept repeating to him, "Big show, Mark, big show."

Word of this story quickly spread beyond the 313 class and since then whenever he makes a particularly gruesome mistake, one can hear a soft "big show" from one of the students, which instantly catches his attention, hence forcing him to tell the story again, thus perpetuating the cycle.

Note: A group of physics majors named their soccer team "Big Show" and played in the Just-For-Fun league of IM Soccer in winter, 2007.