Here is the posting I sent about "Understanding" that I
posted to the physhare list some two years back.
___________________________________________________________
I feel that the process of human understanding consists in explaining, to
one's ownself or to others, new or complex phenomena, in terms of and by
the anology of phenomena with which we are already familiar in our daily
life. We may call
it by the term modelling also. Thus we understand the motions of all bodies
in terms the motions pebbles, wheels, tops etc. and motion of sound and
light waves in terms of familiar water waves and so on. When we come across
a phenomenon which does not lend itself to this process we cannot
understand it. This was the difficulty experienced by the physicists at the
beginning of this century. Electron appeared to have both properties of a
wave as well as a particle and in our daily life we do not come across any
thing that is particle as well as a wave. A sack in a running coach does
not become more heavy and they could not understand Relativity. With the
above definition of "understanding" we do not understand Quantum Theory and
Relativity even today. The internal logical consistency of both the
theories and their consistency with the experimental results prove their
validity but do not improve their understanding. Most of the text books on
QM start with the postulates and build up the mathematical apparatus not
making any futile attempts to make QM understandable, and this I
think is correct. We mathematically juggle quantities which do not correspond
to observables (psi) to get predictions corresponding to observables
position, momentum etc. As Gamow says in "Tompkins in Wonderland" there is
a finite probability of caged lion to get out of the cage on its own. An
ordinary man will call it miracle. Miracles are not understandable and in
modern physics such miracles of tunneling are of common occurance.(please
note that the phenomena of money in husband's purse disappearing and
reappearing in wife's handbag is not
a QM phenomenon.)
IN CONCLUSION, IT MAY BE POSSIBLE TO MAKE PHYSICS UNDERSTANDABLE AT THE
HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL. THE TEACHERS SHOULD DEFINITELY SHOULD STRIVE FOR IT. BUT
GIVING
STUDENTS AN IDEA THAT UNDERSTANDABILITY IS A PARAMOUNT VIRTUE AND LACK OF IT
INDICATES INADEQUACY OR INCORRECTNESS MAY RENDER THEM HANDICAPPED WHEN THEY
GO TO HIGHER LEVELS.THEY WILL BE SUBJECTED TO ALL THE TROUBLES THAT WE HAD
UNDERGONE. NATURE IS UNDERSTANDABLE IS ONLY OUR BELIEF OR FAITH. BUT IT IS
NOT A PROMISE MADE BY NATURE. AS FAR AS WE KNOW IT MAY NOT CARE TWO HOOTS
FOR US.