Upper school physics teacher Antonio Nassar’s article titled “Bohemian Trajectories of Airy Packets” was published in the Annals of Physics Journal this summer. The quantum mechanics article, which discusses the variations in the paths of particles and the influence of the act of observation upon these paths, took him about a year and a half to complete.

“There’s always a sense of satisfaction because you can share with a world of people,” Nassar said. “For example, when I go to Google Scholar, you can track how many people have read my paper, downloaded and referenced my paper — 1,500 times … a lot of people read it.”

This is Nassar’s 59th published article.

“I have a collaborator, we exchange ideas, send them back and forth around 20 times, sometimes more than that, then we start writing,” Nassar said.

Nassar, who has a doctorate in physics and has pursued quantum mechanics since graduate school, was also asked to write a book based on the topics of his research.

He has composed such pieces in the past, expounding on and adding to the study of quantum mechanics and other branches of physics.

Nassar’s prospective book has been requested by Springer, a publishing company with headquarters in Germany.

“A paper is condensed, and sometimes it can be very condensed,” Nassar said. “But in a book, you can have six chapters or seven chapters — two chapters to explain all that has been done, then in the third chapter, you introduce your idea and pour out everything you’ve developed.”

While Nassar has written books in the past, they were not like his current assignment.

“It has been a joyful pursuit of excellence,” Nassar said.