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Robert Cohen wrote:
*You* know why defining v and a are useful. *I* know whydefining them is
useful. Everyone on this list knows why defining them is useful.
My point is that the *students* don't.
I find this puzzling and very much outside my experience with students.
Acceleration is a very concrete entity that students can
visualize and have a
feeling that they are "getting Physics" early on in the course.
If as much class
time is used to develop the concept of acceleration (e.g. - a
ball thrown upward
loses 10 m/s in speed every second) and to spend time doing
conceptual type
problems (throw a ball upward at 40 m/s - what is it's speed
after 3 seconds)
instead of doing clever but boring calculus derivations of the kinematic
equations, the students will then be receptive to the more abstract and
beautiful ideas contained in Newton's Laws. The calculus is in
all the textbooks
- there are better ways for us to use class time.