Re: increasing, decreasing...

[Aaron Titus <titus@NCAT.EDU>]

At 06:44 PM 1/3/2002 -0500, you wrote:

> This came as a rather sudden, and enlightening, realization to me only
> recently as a result of using Matter & Interactions (Chabay and Sherwood,
> 1997. Wiley).

Hi Joe!  I remember your talk at the NCSAAPT meeting in Durham (as I
recall).  I wish you could have been at the Fall meeting in Morehead
City.  I talked on the somewhat confusing language we sometimes use (like
the inconsistent way we use the words "increasing" and "decreasing").  I
also talked about how the organization of the intro textbook can cause some
of this confusion (like teaching 1-D vectors before 2-D vectors so that
students associate "positive" and "negative" with the vector itself and not
a vector component; thus, students ask whether a 2-D vector is positive or
negative).  I also said that I thought that the M & I book was perhaps the
best attempt at tackling these issues.  Man, I'd love to use that book someday.

AT


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Dr. Aaron Titus
Department of Physics
316 Marteena Hall
North Carolina A&T State University
Greensboro, NC  27411

Email:  titus@ncat.edu
Phone: (336) 334-7646
Fax:   (336) 256-0815
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