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John Decker Wrote:
At 02:55 PM 9/10/01 -0500, Herb Schulz wrote:
I've
always taken points away from students that don't define the
coordinate system they are using in a given problem;
I agree that students should be taught to think clearly and communicate
clearly about their choice of coordinate system.
On the other hand, I think the foregoing overstates it a bit. Any
physically-significant calculation will give a final result that is
!independent! of the choice of coordinate system -- so if only the final
result is being presented, there is no reason why anything needs to be said
about the coordinate system.
In any case: Students should not be required to guess what coordinate
system the teacher would have used, nor penalized for choosing a different
one.