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Re: Online Labs



From: Chuck Britton <britton@NCSSM.EDU>
[ At MIT] Freshman Physics HAS NO
LAB COMPONENT!!!!!
The lab 'requirement' is met by each student electing a separate lab
course - electronics, optics etc.

Sounds immanently sensible to me.


Something similar with regard to first-year labs pertained at MIT 20 years
ago when I was considering returning to school to study physics.

The advice I received at that time from people in a position to know was in
the Boston area consider Brandeis or the (then) University of Lowell first.
Many students who went to MIT as undergraduates to study physics left
feeling bitterly disappoineted. Virtually none left Lowell or Brandeis
feeling that way. A veteran community college teacher who had sent many
students to area colleges as Junior majors reported the same finding about
MIT; many third and fourth-year students returned to him complaining
bitterly, but none from Lowell or Brandeis.

I suspect this may still be true at MIT. I suspect very strongly that one
of the reasons many MIT freshmen got lost was the lack of labs.

In any case beware of thinking that what MIT does must be right because it
is MIT. (With apologies to any readers from that August institution.)

Chris Horton