Jim DiCarlo

A lover of the outdoors, pennywhistle extraordinaire and brilliant STEM thinker, James DiCarlo will celebrate his 25th year of teaching physics at Exeter this coming fall. DiCarlo plays weekly at a session for Irish music in Amesbury, Massachusetts, as well as monthly at a local contradance on Elm Street with fellow Physics Instructor Brad Robinson. He runs the Outdoor Challenge club sport in the fall and has advised the Puzzle, Physics and Contradance Clubs on campus. Additionally, DiCarlo is deeply involved with the Mountain School of Milton Academy in Vermont and has spent two years there teaching both mathematics and physics.

DiCarlo grew up in Massachusetts, and attended Lawrence Academy in Groton, MA, where he played piano in the school’s stage band. It was there that DiCarlo also became acquainted with hiking and developed a love of the outdoors. “I can’t say I fit in [at Lawrence Academy] very well—it’s a big hockey and football school,” he said. “I was good at academics, but that didn’t seem to count for much.”

“I got completely hooked on the mathematical elegance in physics,” DiCarlo said about his electricity and magnetism class. “I never really understood calculus until I learned to use it to solve physics problems.”

After high school, DiCarlo attended Dartmouth University, thinking he would pursue electrical engineering. In order to qualify for the electrical engineering major, Dartmouth required that students had taken courses in physical sciences. During his second prerequisite class, DiCarlo had already been converted. “I got completely hooked on the mathematical elegance in physics,” DiCarlo said about his electricity and magnetism class. “I never really understood calculus until I learned to use it to solve physics problems.”

Later in college, DiCarlo would pique his interests in Dartmouth’s physics labs. He experimented with a variety of projects, including using x-ray machines to measure the spacing between atoms in a salt crystal, watching a metallic sample become superconducting as he dunked it in liquid helium or firing gamma rays at a piece of aluminum and watching how their frequency changed depending on what angle they came out at.

Teaching at Exeter was DiCarlo’s first job in the educational field. He began in the fall of 1993, taking the place of a physics teacher who was on sabbatical. The following year, he filled in for a different teacher until a long-term position opened up for him.

Throughout his time at Exeter, DiCarlo has lived in Peabody, Cilley, Webster and Wentworth Halls. Currently, he resides in a faculty house on campus with his two children, both of whom attend the Academy. He is now affiliated with Moulton House.

DiCarlo appreciates his time at Exeter. “I couldn’t be in a better spot than here at Exeter,” he said. “The students here are crazy smart, they do their homework mostly, they have moments of brilliant insight, they’re genuinely curious about how the world works.” DiCarlo’s taught Newton’s laws of motion and the basics of electricity in introductory physics courses but has also delved into more complicated concepts, like Maxwell’s equations, relativity and quantum mechanics. Furthermore, DiCarlo has worked with seniors on their senior projects on a broad selection of topics, including building an NMR machine, a theremin, a sea kayak, a wooden canoe and a device that used sound waves to create visible light, or sonoluminescence. “I worked with a girl last year to try to understand the physics that went into building the first atomic bombs,” DiCarlo said. This year he is teaching a Physics 999 course about relativity theories. “At how many other high schools in the country would 13 students sign up to take a field course in black holes?” DiCarlo posed.

During his time at the Mountain School, DiCarlo taught students more than just math and physics. Each semester, the Mountain School has 45 high school juniors from across the country work and live on an organic farm. DiCarlo was a dorm parent and an advisor, helping students cut their own firewood. He also taught knitting and cross country skiing. “It’s an incredible school,” DiCarlo said. But the Mountain School isn’t the only way DiCarlo engages in his love for hiking and nature. In the summertime, DiCarlo and his wife manage a camp owned by the Appalachian Mountain Club in the White Mountains. “When I’m not painting buildings, unclogging toilets or doing the bookkeeping, I get out hiking in the mountains nearby. There are 48 4,000 foot mountains in New Hampshire. I’ve only got four more left!”he said. 

Here at the Academy, students appreciate the way DiCarlo relates physics to concepts in the real world. “Mr. DiCarlo is very interested in teaching the connection between theoretical physics and real life,” lower Penny Brant said. “It’s an amazing moment to see how physics, something at first seeming like irrelevant numbers on a paper, actually demonstrate how the world functions.” Lower Deniz Akman agreed, saying that “this allows visual learners to understand certain problems better rather than reading out a problem and solving with an explanation by words.”

Students admire his talent and passion for the subject. Coming into class each day, upper Eugene Hu described DiCarlo as always sporting “a very cheerful disposition.” Brant shares this sentiment, saying, “Dicarlo always greets the class with a bright smile and make sure everyone is comfortable with raising their questions. He really values every student’s questions or input in helping us to better understand the subject.”

DiCarlo is always willing to talk more in-depth about physics in class and explore topics his students are curious about. “He often takes the time to explain how a formula was discovered or share an anecdote about Newton,” upper Emma Dixon said. “He’s willing to go off on tangents about subjects that are very loosely connected to what we’re supposed to be going over in class if someone is curious about them.”

DiCarlo has left a lasting impact on the students in his physics classes and at the Mountain School. “I am always excited to go to physics class because I know that he will do everything to improve my success,” said Akman.