Simen

I am a person who has always been curious about the fundamentals of nature. I grew up with a great enthusiasm for learning about the sciences, and I have been lucky to have had creative teachers who knew how to teach complicated subjects in encouraging and digestible ways. My greatest curiosity lies in the field of Nanoscience and Technology where we now can design and build things from the bottom, atom by atom, molecule by molecule. Down there is a whole new world of physics, quantum physics, awaiting to be explored by us. However, quantum physics is often counter intuitive and seriously hard to understand so, in many cases, creating visualisations for oneself that connects the quantum realm to our graspable and familiar is a prerequisite for understanding. Now that I am finishing up my Doctorate degree, I believe that my broad knowledge makes me skilled at explaining science in understandable ways to interested learners of any age and backgrounds.

Tutoring Experience

Tutor in A-level physics at Zero Gravity since 2020 | Tutored and mentored one student who achieved A* in A-level physics.

Presenter at several scientific conferences, workshops and seminars.

Training and educating of soldiers in the Norwegian Army where I worked as a Sergeant for three years. The Norwegian Army focuses on effective pedagogics and didactics in their training and leadership, and I have received formal education in these subjects.

Tutoring Approach

I believe that people learn best when they are comfortable, relaxed and happy. I thus seek to tailor my teaching approach to suit the need of the individual learner. Experience taught me that one-to-one tutoring works best with a mixed teaching approach with a variety of elements that allows active participation from the tutee. Understanding nature sometimes require the study of difficult equations but many concepts can be understood via easy-to-grasp metaphors and analogues. For instance, many aspects of electronics can be thought of as analogues to the plumbing pipes in your own house, where taps serve as electronic switches, elevations as resistors, radiators as capacitors, and water pumps as voltage sources. Or that Physics is a grand tree where the trunk is fundamental physics (i.e. quantum), and other fields such as Optics, Mechanics, and even Chemistry, Biology and Medicine are branching out from the trunk.

Digital educational tools provide benefits to teaching but I am no fan of overuse of e.g. PowerPoint presentations which I often find unsound with the way people learn. A blackboard or pen and paper often serve as more effective tools to feed our brains with new information. I am therefore highly considerate in which digital tools I choose to use in my teaching.