Flash Essay Samples

The article “A Flash of Light” is a first person narration by a physicist who explains his college experience and all the failed experiments he had during his graduation. The narrator tells the reader that his interest in physics started in college, where he learnt that physicist were categorized as experimentalists and theoretical physicist. During the narrator’s junior year in college, the physics department had opened a new electronics workshop to impart practical knowledge of the subject to students. In the workshop, the students would do all sorts of experiments related to physics, including determining the speed of light. After a detail description of the experiment, the narrator tells the reader about his electronics project.
The electronic project was different and gave the narrator a very hard time. Although he did take help from the book titled Basic Electronics for Scientists, he discovered that the book was not of much help. The narrator confesses that he was far behind his classmates and did not have the knack to make things work. One fine day, the narrator received a catalogue by postal mail. In that catalogue was written that by enrolling in a certain course, student could design their own circuits and could even suggest whether the student’s electrical project design would work or not. The narrator was impressed by the catalogue and enrolled himself by paying a fees of US$200. The narrator’s design was eventually certified and he decided to work on it diligently before the project deadline.
When the final day to showcase the projects came, several students were in the lab with their respective projects. When it was the narrator’s turn to display his project, he forgot a certain step, and as a result, the device caught fire and exploded. Thankfully, no one was hurt in the explosion, which the narrator described as a shotgun blast. His professor, Mr. Pollock, was surely not pleased with his work. The following summer while watch Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon, the narrator had an epiphany that theoretical physicist were as important was experimental physicist and he was happy that he had not yet discovered to which side of physics he belonged.