Kelly Krieble

Associate Professor of Physics (1999)

Education

• B.S., Moravian University
• M.S., Ph.D., Lehigh University

Contact

Email: krieblek@moravian.edu
Phone: 610-861-1437 
Office: Collier Hall of Science, Room 109

Areas of Research and/or Expertise

Optical spectroscopy, Mossbauer spectroscopy, the hydraulic jump, fractal and disordered systems, and chaos.

Biography

Kelly Krieble’s life has at times imitated his science. As a physicist, he has studied systems such as the stock market that defy prediction. And, his life has delivered some pretty unforeseen results. As a postdoctoral fellow, for example, he sallied forth into the faculty job market in the usual way, scouring the listings and sending out résumés. Among his choices was a school in Arkansas. The surprise—not clear from its name—was that it was a special public high school. It wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind, but he took it and stayed four years. Four unexpectedly wonderful years, he says.

Krieble grew up toying with things, surrounded by science kits, Erector sets, magnets, chemistry apparatuses, and other stuff. “I liked to build things,” he says simply. That led to a passion for physics, for all those splendors of electricity and optics and magnetism and chaos theory and much more. Those interests blossomed when he entered Moravian. Knowing what he wanted to do, he burrowed headlong into it, drawing support and guidance from faculty. He raves about those college mentors—and now he is their colleague. Krieble is an energetic, compact man with a sunny disposition, filled with enthusiasm for his field and for his students at Moravian. As a Moravian graduate (Class of 1986), he says he has a particular affinity for the school and for those who enroll in his classes. The college atmosphere is the place he belongs, he believes, because it affords a chance to try different varieties of research and to enable students to do those things that have delighted him—in a word, to toy with things.