[Phys-L] Re: student mathematical capabilities

[Bernard Cleyet <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>]

In England, at least at Birmingham according to Peter Redmond, Newtonian
mechanics was not taught in the Physics dept., but in the Maths.  It's
in a course called Applied Maths.

Gate Keeper Seese always earned A's 'till calc.  Then she decried the
lack of application.  Algebra, etc. had word problems that made the
math. transparent.  She revealed this when I showed her some Phys.
problems involving calc.

bc, who thought a great number of early Physicists were also
Mathematicians (et visa versa).

Hugh Haskell wrote:

> At 07:21  -0400 9/15/05, Jeff Weitz wrote:
>
> > My colleagues in the math department tell me that they teach math, not
> > physics, not chemistry, and not cooking.  Their averaged out response to
> > physics is much the same as the averaged out response of members of the
> > English Department (excuse me, the Department of English). The math
> > teachers do a very good job of teaching such things as solving algebraic
> > equations and making graphs, but include almost no discussion of
> > applications until AP Calculus where they are required to talk a little
> > about kinematics and related rate problems.  For this reason, students
> > get a shock when they take chem or physics because a problem described
> > verbally has to be solved using mathematics.  The translation has to be
> > practiced for some time before they get it.
>
> In their effort to teach "mathematics," apparently many math teachers
> have forgotten that much of mathematics has real applications to the
> real world (I'm afraid that some physics teachers have forgotten that
> as well, but it's apparently not so widely done as in math).
>
> This is, I think, a relatively recent phenomenon. I vividly recall my
> college calculus course, now more than fifty years past, in which the
> textbook (written by the department chair), which I still have and
> frequently refer to, had many practical applications, both in

cut
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