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Re: Physicists teaching astronomy



The "credible source supporting this" would be the abundance of common practice. In a perfect world we might have each class taught by an expert in the field, but that rarely happens, even in large schools where the expert might exist. Smaller schools cannot support enough physics faculty members to have an expert in each field taught.

My expertise is experimental nuclear physics. I teach general physics mostly. I also teach quantum mechanics even though I am not a theoretician. I teach electronics even though I am not an electrical engineer. I teach astronomy even though I am neither an astronomer nor astrophysicist. I believe I do a very good job in all the things I teach.

Remember that a graduate degree only partly represents experience with a particular body of knowledge. It also represents experience in academic methods and also a certain "academic attitude." A person with a graduate degree does not stop learning. When I was called upon to teach astronomy I began reading astronomy textbooks and astronomy magazines. I started spending time looking at the sky with my eyes, with binoculars, and with telescopes. I might have been a bit shaky the first time I taught it, but by the second time my students assumed astronomy was my specialty. A person with a graduate degree in science ought to pull this off with little trouble. In our local high school there is a person with a masters degree in biology teaching astronomy. She does a wonderful job.

Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817