Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Banked road



CB! Tanks.

1, oneself is a nearby object.
2, from feelings, not emotional, comes the most direct knowledge and are the
first teacher.

bc


Chuck Britton wrote:

At 2:40 AM -0500 on 11/9/01, John S. Denker wrote
This he calls 'centrifugal force'.

I wouldn't have said that.

It is not traditional and not recommended to ask what the observer "feels".
Observers are paid to observe the objects in their vicinity, not to worry
about what they themselves are feeling.

It is certainly true that 'Observers' are required to be as objective
as possible,
To analyze situations mathematically and without feeling.

HOWEVER, pedagogically speaking (and I am teaching HS draftees in
their first exposure) there are MANY students who benefit from
'putting themselves' into a given word problem description.
i.e. if they were a tiny (massless) 'Physics Ant' between those two
masses which are sliding across the frictionless surface with an
acceleration of 2 m/s/s, what THEY experience (in their 'Minds Eye'
is the force of contact between the two blocks.

They are willing to agree that the force 'from the left' is equal and
opposite to the 'force from the right'.

For those few students who ask 'But there can't be an acceleration of
the ant if the forces are balanced', well, THEY have advanced far
enough in their abstractions to deal with zero mass 'objects'.

Sure, our analysis MUST be dispassionate and mathematical,
BUT, many students learn well by be asked
what the would 'feel' in the specific situation.

(and these physical 'feelings' are easy for them to separate from the
emotional 'feelings' that their 'Counselors' are constantly asking
them to express.)
--

.-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-
\ / \ / \ N / \ C / \ S / \ S / \ M / \ / \ /
`-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-'
Chuck Britton Education is what is left when
britton@ncssm.edu you have forgotten everything
North Carolina School of Science & Math you learned in school.
(919) 286-3366 x224 Albert Einstein, 1936