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Re: apparent weight



Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 23:42:30 -0800
From: Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: Apparent weight

> Students go to the elevator and observe what happens; it is a
> part of a lab in Concepts of Science. What is wrong with this?

I've no problem with apparent weight being the reading on a scale.
I ask: How is apparent weight related to gravitational field? Is
gravitational field just the ratio of apparent weight to inertial
mass? That is the usual operational definition. The apparent weight
of a mass in an orbiting shuttle is mighty small, I'll wager. That
means the gravitational field in the shuttle is mighty small, too.

You are lucky of having students who are ready to deal with so many
cncepts in the first university physics course. Most likely they did
well in a high school physics course. The principle of equivalence, a
distiction between the inertial and gravitational masses, etc. are great
topics but I do not know how to make them meaningful to many of my
Concepts of Science students; most of then had no h.s. physics. And the
situation in my algebra based course is only better. I have not been
teaching a calculus-based introductional physics course for many years.

The lowest possible denominator approach? Not fair for good students?
Yes, I know. But I am only a teacher who "was told", implicitly, "do the
best you can". What is "the best" in my environment may not be the best
at the near-by Princeton, or at FSU. Several people were saing this in
recent messages.
Ludwik Kowalski