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Re: Evolution and Creationism/Thank you/3rd Law



Dearest Fizzlers,

Thank you to my colleagues who have explored interesting cosmological
tangents with an open, interested, and level tone.
Thank you to my colleagues who have made simple, positive statements.
Thank you to my quiet colleagues who wrestle.

There is so much that we do not know.

In peace,
Dorrie


OK, I can't help but add a long PS:

I, at times, have come to an impasse when trying to teach Newton's Third
Law -- I have had a student or three be quite adamant that it could not
possibly be so. I then slow down and review everything we've done in
class to illustrate it. I also remind that physics offers us models that
tend to fit pretty well with that which we observe -- some better than
others, and our models are always under construction (one of the
understandings about the scientific process which I would like students to
take from my [high school] course). I offer that models of the universe
through history beautifully illustrate changing scientific views, which
seems to reach many students -- it helps that they are already familiar
with older views through their history courses. I praise the skepticism
as healthy, but ask them to please be open to how well the model fits
together to predict certain phenomena. I don't ask my students to accept
anything as an absolute truth, but I do expect them to be able to apply
the model and make predictions in different situations. If you have a
powerful whammy for winning the skeptics on this one, please let me know!

(Curiously, I think I have more resistance on this one than when we "do"
Special Relativity!)

-db