|
| To answer my own rhetorical question: I think teaching
| paradoxes (in an introductory course) is the epitome of bad
| pedagogy.
In small defence of some discussion of paradoxes (not as a general
method of pedagogy!)
Some paradoxes are so well known and so in the public reservoir of
general knowledge, that to avoid their discussion strikes me as almost
pedagogically negligent. These are very far and few between IMO. The
canonical example IMO, is the twin paradox. Perhaps the "Pole and the
Barn". When I discuss these examples, I try to really downplay the
"paradoxical" part of it and discuss it as an example, where I might
mention as an aside that some folks may finds aspects of these problems
paradoxical. Or at least that what I try to do. I wouldn't go any
farther in the defence of paradoxes. (The above isn't in our
introductory course, but in our third semester "modern" physics course.)
And I use the above two examples *more* as a vehicle for drawing careful
space-time diagrams to aid the interpretation of problems rather than as
examples of paradoxes.
|
| The correctly-stated laws of physics do not lead to paradoxes.
| The incorrectly-stated laws of physics are full of paradoxes.
| Why should we give the students practice misstating the laws
| of physics?
|
Amen
| One of the guys who taught me relativity said that his goal
| was to get us to the point where we couldn't even state a
| paradox ... since a correctly-stated description of any
| situation is non-paradoxical.
|