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Re: PHYS-L Digest - 3 Feb 2004 to 4 Feb 2004 (#2004-35)



|
| Perhaps we should think about it this way: given a set of students who
| will
| most likely not go into science fields, who will work most likely for
| corporations, and have 1 semester to learn "Physics", what do you cover?
| My
| feeling is that the essence of physics can be summarized by a few
| concepts:
|
| * estimation, and dealing with large and small numbers
| * critical thinking, and falsification of explanations
| * conservation laws as a tool to describe many diverse phenomena, from the
| largest scales to the smallest
| * relativity, the role of measurement, and the wave nature of matter as
| the
| "unintuitive" modern science, upon which all technology rests
|
[***]
I'd venture to say that given your stipulations of one semester and the
clientele that even the above list unfortunately needs to be pruned.

Joel R