Re: [Phys-l] workable versus unworkable energy

["Bob LaMontagne" <rlamont@postoffice.providence.edu>]

Remind me again as to why we are bothering to teach abstract concepts to
concrete thinkers in the first place. Isn't it like reading poetry to your
cat?

Oops, now I remember. That's what we fake doing so we can make a living!

Bob at PC

> Of course by definition energy is not a fluid, but the idea of
> transference
> is deeply imbedded in the human way of thinking.  It is a learned idea as
> Piaget so aptly showed.  At certain levels of development children do not
> understand it.  When understanding does happen, it is initially only for
> concrete objects.  Now energy has a big problem, in that it is not a
> concrete object, and can not be seen.  Anton Lawson has shown that
> concepts
> which involve unseeable objects are much harder for students to understand
> and he has even demonstrated that there may be a level of thinking,
> theoretical, above formal operational where students can more easily
> understand unseeable concepts.  This includes things like evolution, and
> most physics concepts.  Only a small fraction (<20%) of graduating college
> seniors test at this higher theoretical level.
>
> So teaching energy is much easier when it can be made more concrete by
> using
> a model that it behaves like a fluid in that it can be transferred.
> However
> when doing this, one must always put in front of the students that this is
> just a way of visualizing it, or is an analogy.  The need for analogy and
> it
> uses has been explored by John J. Clement and U.Mass Amherst in a number
> of
> papers in JRST.  The purely abstract arguments based on working are very
> weak for most HS and college students.