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Re: [Phys-l] STUDY SUGGESTS NO CHILD LAW MAY BE DUMBING DOWNSTUDENTS




----- Original Message ----- From: "Hugh Haskell" <hhaskell@mindspring.com>


At 10:46 -0600 11/4/08, Paul Lulai wrote:

Regarding re-teaching: In my opinion... a big problem a lot of teachers
are a slave to the textbook. For some reason each science textbook
seems to start with the blasted metric system. For crying out loud,
skip it. Measurement, skip it. Conversions, skip it. Trig, skip it.
Teach them in the course (my opinion).

I'll go farther than Hugh--you can't (or shouldn't) skip any of this--but you can be extremely light on the Trig.

Hugh talked to metric and measurement so let me hit conversions and trig. If students are to make sense of the scientific ideas, they have to relate those ideas to their current ideas and perceptions. Like it or not, in the U.S. we must deal with feet, miles, miles/hour, pounds, gallons, and the like. For all the reasons already stated, we should deal primarily with the metric system--at least when any problem solving is involved--but for conceptual understanding you need to relate back to English units--often. So conversions are important--but limit these to a few. The technically incorrect 2.2 lbs = 1 kg (formally the weight of 1 kg is 2.2 lbs) works fine. Rough values for 30,55,70 miles per hour in km/h and m/s should be sufficient. The Heller set of 'real world' problems often mix metric and English units--its what we encounter daily. As to the Trig--I teach my Calculus class with nothing more than the definition of Sine, Cosine, and Tangent. That's all you really need. That's not too difficult for any science class to deal with. Do all 2-3 dimensional problems as separated 1-dimensional and then you need only deal with vector components--that is, sine, cosine, and tangent--to move between 1-D and 2-D or even 3-D. It would certainly help at the College level if more students were comfortable with this.

Rick

***************************
Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN
rtarara@saintmarys.edu
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Free Physics Software
New: Lab module--Calorimetry
www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html
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