![Physics teacher Jack Van Natta helps students during Access with an AP Physics lab on Nov. 14. Van Natta has taught his students with many lectures involving fun and interesting examples, such as the rocket lab and many others. “My kids, growing up, would come home and we'd sit down for dinner. They would talk about what happened in class [and] their teachers, and just about something that amazed them. And I wanted to be that teacher,” Van Natta said.](https://rockmediaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/IMG_5429-e1711746931176.jpg)
As students sit down and prepare for another long lecture, Jack Van Natta starts the projector and begins today’s lesson. However, Van Natta adds his own twist on how he teaches physics.
He brings his “Weekend Physics,” an interesting thing related to physics outside the classroom, every Monday.
Besides being a science teacher and military veteran in the Air Force, Van Natta has been a high school soccer referee for around 11 years.
“It’s something that I think is probably the most challenging thing I’ve ever done [with] the sport, and it’s a skill that not many people possess, and so I enjoy it,” Van Natta said.
Van Natta tries to encourage students’ work ethics.
“When I see kids give up when they don’t get an answer on their first try, it bugs me. It bugs me big time because I was them,” Van Natta said. “The biggest and best part of failing is that you never actually fail, ultimately, if you never give up.”
Van Natta became a science teacher for a multitude of reasons, from his experiences as an aviator to his kids telling him about their amazing experiences in school, which inspired him to try out teaching.
“There was electricity, there were forces everywhere. There were torques there. There was the atmosphere we had to deal with, an angry atmosphere all the time. All of those things that I did in my Navy career just made me even more excited to find out why things happen,” Van Natta said.
Van Natta has a huge interest in building different types of machines and contraptions related to physics, and he makes them mainly for Halloween. Every year, he tries something different and adds some new feature that makes the machine more exciting, helping him understand what works every time. During the first semester of COVID-19 in 2020, Van Natta created The Rube Goldberg machine, which included elements he had taught his students.
“I’ll go out my garage for hours on a Saturday and try to build something. I don’t know, I have a love for that kind of stuff,” Van Natta said.
Van Natta has his own secret to success and has shared it with so many students which has inspired them to do well in school.
“I think the secret to success starts with this: just show up. You may be lost in class, but just show up, right? You may not like your current job, but just show up,” Van Natta said.
![Ice and snow make it difficult for drivers on the road. During snowstorms, drivers have poor visibility, and frozen roads make it difficult to stay in control. “Driving home from Denver [on Friday], the neighborhoods weren’t plowed. By the time we got back they were only plowing highways. We spun out, nearly got stuck and fishtailed a few different times,” Connor Pugh ‘26 said.](https://rockmediaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Untitled_Artwork-e1732045465987.jpg)
