by Gerry Boyle '78

Virginia Long was a carpenter with a bachelor's degree in religion, adept at framing, siding, roofing, interior trim. This was in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Long worked outdoors year-round as her co-op contracting company built houses and did renovations.

And then she decided she didn't want to do carpentry any more. She didn't want to work outside in the winter. "I thought about what I wanted to do," she said. "I thought about sign language, actually. I'd learned a little of that."

But as Long mulled her future more, it hit her. "Physics was like a lightbulb going off in my head," she said.

An unlikely lightbulb. Long had taken only one physics course in her life, and that was in high school, and she hadn't even liked the class. But physics came back into her life.

"It was because I read books for lay people about physics, just for my own entertainment," she said. "The Dancing Wu Li Masters is one. The Tao of Physics. And then, even more than those, I read Ursula LeGuin."

Long laughed, shook her head.

"This will be embarrassing to admit. In almost all of her books a theoretical physicist is the hero. . . . That's the hero I wanted to be, I guess.

"But there was this other flip side of it. It was so cool to figure out the laws of the universe. I also, thought, well, I won't have to wear nylons to work. Or learn to type. . . . It was because I didn't want to work for somebody else in an office."

Long has an office now, in the Mudd Building. In her second year at Colby, she doesn't work for somebody else, unless, of course, it's the College and her students. Her carpentry tools are home, she doesn't miss house building, and last semester she was enjoying herself more and more in the classroom. Long still is on the path she chose, though it's been a long and sometimes daunting one.

She had to start from scratch. For three years she took undergraduate physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She retook undergraduate math, sitting in classrooms with students 10 years younger. When her undergraduate requirements were fulfilled, Long kept going.

In the Ph.D. program at Chapel Hill, she considered nuclear physics but eventually settled on solid state physics, the study of materials that are solid as opposed to molecules in a gaseous or liquid state. Long did three years of post-doctoral research at the State University of New York at Binghamton and has continued her research at Colby. She wrote and had accepted a National Science Foundation grant before arriving at Colby. With matching funds from the College, the grant allowed for purchase of a spectrometer, "a very excellent one," Long said.

She studies fullerines, Carbon 60 arranged in a very symmetric cage, different from diamond or graphite. "It looks kind of like soot," Long said. Considered by scientists since the 1980s, fullerines can be combined with polymers to make a thin film. Though there are potential uses in photovoltaic cells and other technology, Long is less interested in studying applications than in how the C60 molecules interact with the polymer chain.

The interactions are hinted at in the vibrations of the molecule. Long's work involves study of the vibrations through spectroscopy, but these days her work mostly revolves around her students.

As a junior faculty member, Long is frank about the learning process--both hers and her students'. Most of her teaching experience had been in discussion groups, and large-class lectures in introductory courses were "a huge leap," she said. "It was partly the material, getting back up to speed on the material and having it at my fingertips enough to answer questions. . . . I think I'm finally getting more relaxed in the classroom, having more fun. I still know it's a huge amount of work. Even my weekends are pretty much full, preparing for classes."

During the summer the load lightens enough so Long only works a normal work day, which leaves time for running, birding (she recounts with delight her sighting of a scarce cerulean warbler in Perkins Arboretum), hiking and gardening (she loves to raise vegetables). But becoming a better teacher, like learning to build a house, takes time. Unlike a construction project, the process never ends.

"Even though I have improved and I'm having more fun and my students probably are having more fun, I still have a ways to go," she said. "It's not a short process, in my experience, to learn to do it well."

And building houses? Long says she doesn't miss it. "I do miss being strong enough," she said. "I just started working out in the gym."