Physicists, Mathematicians, and Their Love for Chalkboards

The aesthetic aspect of using chalkboards in a classroom

Do you remember the chalkboard era? I was in the fourth standard in school when the chalkboards in our classrooms were replaced with white marker boards and to be honest, I didn’t quite like it. There’s this deep aesthetic in writing with chalks on a blackboard. I’m not really sure if I’m the only one who thinks so though. Even in today’s day and age, many great universities prefer using chalkboards. If you ask some prolific mathematicians and physicists all across the world about what they prefer more, I’m pretty sure most of them will say chalkboards. Mathematics is, in many ways, artistry, it is also craftsmanship, and the pleasure of crafting geometrical diagrams, shapes, patterns, labeled drawings using different colored chalks is beyond the conventional pleasure of teaching using modern technological screens.

If you ask me, I would rather sit in a small classroom with a blackboard with a professor writing with colorful chalks than sit in a huge classroom where the professor has all modern tech setups for delivering his lectures. The vibe itself is just so different. Albert Einstein used chalkboards, Richard Feynman had his Caltech boards filled with mathematical equations and diagrams, Professor Walter Lewin, mathematical physicist Edward Witten, Juan Maldacena, and many others still use chalkboards. The classrooms at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Cambridge, MIT, and many other great…