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[Phys-L] Re: Goals of the Introductory Course



Everyone,

Thank you for the replies. My syllabus begins with "meta" goals similar
to the ones John and Rick listed. It helps to know others have a
similar viewpoint. I especially agree that we should work to change the
way our students think about the world.

I'm curious about topic-related goals. John, your post speaks to this
very well, and I would like to press you and everyone else for more
detail. What are the essential topical learning goals we should set for
students in the introductory course?

I realize the list could be quite long, even if we take "essential" in a
quite restrictive sense, which I would like to do for the sake of
argument. I also know the list will differ depending on the
constituencies represented in the class. I'm at a four-year liberal
arts college. We have a single calculus-based two-semester introductory
course with pre-medical students, physics majors, and 3/2 engineering
students in the same room. It seems to me the needs of the physics
majors should largely determine the goals I set for this course, but
perhaps others have a different viewpoint. I do make an effort not to
leave the pre-med students bewildered. (They are by far the largest and
most vocal component of the class.)

I'm hoping to create a leaner curriculum for this course; a "less is
more" approach. Instead of agonizing over what to leave out--I don't
want to leave anything out--, I'm attempting to develop learning goals
that determine what to bring in.

Here is my (very) brief list for the first-semester course, so far:

First semester:

1. Kinematics (1d and 2d)
2. Newton's first law as a statement about reference frames.
2a. The concept of a reference frame.
3. Newton's second law applied to a variety of situations.
4. Newton's third law.
5. Conservation of momentum.
6. Conservation of energy.
7. Rotational kinematics.
8. Rotational dynamics.
9. Conservation of angular momentum.
10. Gravity.

Each of these can and should be subdivided into more detailed learning
goals. The order, of course, can be changed within broad constraints.
Our semester is about fourteen weeks, so some of these topics could be
afforded several days of discussion in class.

I suppose this is somewhat standard list for the first semester course,
but perhaps I have left things off that need to be there considering our
physics majors and 3/2 students are in the room and _need_ this material
for future courses. We all note that statics, wave motion, and fluid
mechanics are missing. I can squeeze that stuff in, but I fear
surpassing the point of diminishing returns, even for the majors.

I need some peer review on this. Is this too lean for the first
semester course?

I haven't started thinking about the second semester course, where we
spend most of our time on standard E&M. But I have a couple of
questions for the list:

In the second semester, I cover Gauss' law, but the students are totally
mystified by it. Is Gauss' law an essential component of the
introductory course?

I don't unify Maxwell's sourceless equations to derive the wave
equation. Is the E&M wave equation an essential component of the
introductory course?


Thanks, and sorry for the long post.

--
Rodney Dunning
Assistant Professor of Physics
Birmingham-Southern College


John Denker wrote:

On 03/22/05 11:49, Rodney Dunning wrote:

When teaching the introductory course, what are the essential lessons
you would like students to learn through having taken the course?


[I wrote this before seeing Rick's note, and I'm
happy to see that we basically agree about the
centrality of learning to think.]

0) Far and away the most important objective is that
they learn to think!

Naturally we're talking about an introductory level
of thinking ... but still this is the crux of the
matter. The idea is that you can measure things
and then use equations etc. to make quantitative
predictions about what will happen next.

Everything else is a just a means to this end.

(As a corollary: thinking requires reading, writing,
studying, calculating, et cetera.)

1) Some notion of how to measure length, mass, time,
voltage, and current. Some notion of how accurately
they can be measured.

2) The great conservation laws: conservation of
energy, conservation of momentum and angular
momentum, conservation of electric charge.

3) Some notion of uncertainty. Measurements do not
need to be exact to be useful. This implies at
least some glimmer of an idea about probability.

4) The great scaling laws: surface as a function
of volume, perimeter as a function of area, et
cetera.

5) Basic notions of wave mechanics. Energy
proportional to the square of the amplitude.
Constructive and destructive interference.

6) Introduction to the universe: How big is an
atom? What is the wavelength of light? How big
are bacteria? Roughly how far away are the moon,
sun, stars?

7) Introduction to electrical technology: current
and voltage; series and parallel circuits; Ohm's
law.

8) Some notion of information, entropy, and the
paraconservation of entropy.

9) Some notion of vectors. Position, velocity,
acceleration, and force as examples of vectors.
Invariance of vector equations under rotation.

10) Newtonian 1/r gravitational potential. Coulomb
potential. Field of a bar magnet, field of a solenoid.
Ferromagnetism distinct from paramagnetism.

11) Physics in the real world. At least one example
examined in enough depth to show how the various
ideas work together. I don't much care what example
you choose (physics of color vision, physics of
power plants, physics of weather, physics of flight,
etc. etc. etc.)


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