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Re: impulse/momentum



On 14 Dec 2003, at 22:06, Herbert H Gottlieb wrote:


What is meant by "useful problems"? Are there any "useless"
problems that we assign to students? If so, what is an example
of a "useless" problem? Perhaps it might be better to call
such problems "impractical" rather than useless.


The word 'useful' has been taken from Jack Uretsky posting.
I assume he used this expression to indicate problems more close
to real-life situations rather than problems based on over-simplified
and idealised models.Naturally such solutions to the latter type of
problems are not straight away applicable to real-life situations.

The last statement above (about the limitations of our teaching)
should be clarified. What are some limitations of our teaching
that we have to keep in mind? Do all of us face the same
limitations in our teaching, or do these limitations vary
greatly from teacher to teacher?

As I have said in my posting in order to increase the understanding
of the student step by step we over-simplified models of the real
world and then add the influencing factors one by one. Even in this
approach we can never cover all the factors because of syllabus,
time limitation and pressure to increase percentage of passes.

regards,
Sarma.
Herb Gottlieb from New York City
(Where we never assign useless problems to our physics students)