Stephon Alexander: A Real-Life Superhero

(Mood music) - When I was little I wasn't necessarily the strongest student.

And I used to bring in comic books and deliberately sit at the back of the room.

I was into at the time Ironman, big time and the X-Men.

I continued on throughout the New York public school system, I went to do a Clinton high school.

Clinton was known as basically the school for the truants basically.

Around 10th grade I actually took physics.

My physics teacher was a man by the name of Daniel Kaplan.

The guy walked in the middle of the room, sat on a desk and took a ball and he threw it up in the air.

And then he goes, "if I throw the ball up goes to the top, the velocity is zero.

What happens to the velocity when it comes back down?"

And at that moment, I just basically had this intuitive feeling for it.

And I just call out the answer.

The velocity should be exactly the same if there's no friction.

And he goes, "that's absolutely correct.

That's absolutely brilliant."

And this is the first time that any teacher had used those types of words toward me.

So instead of cutting class, I used to just go into his office.

He'd be doing his work, but if I had a question I wanted to look at a book.

He was just there.

One day I went to Mr. Kaplan's office, decided to test this idea on him.

I said "Mr.Kaplan, I want to be a physicist.

Of course, you know, the truth was, I was very much insecure and didn't think I would have what it took to even graduate high school.

He was just like, okay, what have to do is go to the very best college and you have to be good at math because that's a language that physicists speak.

I was like, okay, I'll do that.

He said, okay, so they teach calculus you should take calculus early.

So the next year I took calculus.

So this was the kind of energy that he kind of gave to me.

He's very important As a young person, this guy's, like, you know he's like a superhero!

He had a real passion and vision to make a difference.

And I'm a product of that.