A Demonstration Handbook for Physics

Created as a guide for high school and college physics teachers, this handbook contains hundreds of apparatus demonstrations that require only low-cost, everyday materials.

University of Minnesota physics professor George Freier (1915 to 2005) was as well known for his avuncular demeanor as his studies of lightning, rain, snowflakes and other weather-related phenomena.

Freier graduated from River Falls State Teachers College in Wisconsin in 1938 and taught science and mathematics in White Lake, Wisconsin, for three years.

He received a master of arts degree from the University of Minnesota in 1941 and worked in the Naval Ordnance Laboratory from 1942 to 1944. Freier received a doctorate in nuclear physics from the university in 1949 but switched to atmospheric physics 10 years later.

He joined the University of Minnesota s physics faculty as an assistant professor in 1949 and became a full professor in 1958, retiring in 1985. Freier studied the meteorology and physics of large thunderstorms, especially the electrical aspects. He developed a theory of rain formation in which radioactive atoms played a role in nucleation of water to form droplets.

He took an interest in weather lore and frequently answered reporters questions about the validity of weather proverbs; he also wrote a book about weather proverbs.

Freier was an early member of the Minnesota section of the American Association of Physics Teachers. A University of Chicago colleague credited his Demonstration Handbook for Physics, co-written with F.J. Anderson, with helping turn shy faculty into convincing demonstrators and allowing students to enjoy physics more.

Freier was honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award from River Falls State University and a Distinguished Service Citation from the American Association of Physics Teachers for his service to undergraduate education.