It was written
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Just a word of caution in response to Paul and Dennis' remarks: Study
after study has shown that we (in Physics) treat our courses as if they
were NOT the terminal course. Yet the reality is, that more often than we
would like, they are the last real physics course a student will ever take.
(Dykstra: do you have a reference?)
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Why on earth do we need a reference, or even a bunch of studies, it strikes
me that this has been the experience of all of us (or nearly all of us). A
doubt there will be little disagreement with the above statement, even
without a reference. A question is, what if anything to do about it. In my
home institution, its the case that the vast majority of students in our
intro courses have that course as their terminal physics course. However, it
is also true that for all the students for whom it is not the terminal
course are in the same class.
(I'm speaking of our calculus level course which is taught mostly to
engineering majors and a smattering of chemistry and physics majors.)
Incidently our department is in the Engineering School at SDSU and what we
do in the course is impacted very heavily by the knowledge and need for
breadth that this is the engineers physics course.