Re: [Phys-L] The Make-Believe World of Real-World Physics

[Peter Schoch <pschoch@nac.net>]

Perhaps you have hit on the crux of the problem?  

Why should a textbook be written by ONE person?  If you could find someone who knows mechanics (or part of it) well enough, and another for Thermo., and another for Optics, etc. you could spread the workload and get a reasonable assurance that each section will have a higher accuracy.  It then requires an 'editor' to read it for grammar, punctuation, etc. and to attempt to make it have a 'common voice' -- but that is not an insurmountable task.  

While we're on the subject, you could then finally write a book and LEAVE OUT the problem sets.  Y'know, the ones that they constantly reshuffle meaninglessly to justify a new edition, and which causes havoc with syllabi everywhere.  In this age of the Internet, just leave it out of the book and put problem sets online where they can be easily:  edited and corrected.

That's just my 2 cents worth,
Peter Schoch

On Jul 11, 2013, at 12:30 PM, Carl Mungan <mungan@usna.edu> wrote:

> > In particular, Mazur is right that there is a treeeeemendous amount
> > of nonsense in typical physics classes and physics textbooks.  I'm
> > talking about
> > a) some stuff that is just plain wrong,
> > b) some stuff that is 100 years out of date,
> > c) some stuff that is ludicrously impractical, for no good reason,
> > d) some discussions and diagrams that are confused and confusing,
>
> I agree with this paragraph. But at the same time, it makes me
> uncomfortable for the following reason. I personally think it's very hard
> to write an introductory physics textbook (let's say a first edition, to
> make the point extra sharp). Much much harder than probably anything else
> that we physicists can write. We're experts in our research fields, and can
> have fairly high confidence that when we write a research article or
> monograph, it's probably going to well established. (Even if it's got
> errors in it, those will be found and fixed as the research field advances.
> Some errors are even very helpful in that they attract people to work on
> showing what's wrong with them and what's better about some other view.)
> But who can claim to be an expert in every field of physics, which is what
> an intro text has to cover (more or less)? In fact, a textbook writer will
> necessarily base much of his (her) writing on how he learned the stuff and
> what others have written. But we all know how new misconceptions and new
> views of how to teach intro physics are constantly appearing.
>
> How easy to therefore become paralyzed into not daring to write anything!
> Because most of it is going to fall into categories a to d above
> eventually. Maybe not today, but maybe next year or next decade.
>
> So for that reason I think we need to give textbook writers a big amount of
> encouragement and applaud their courage and give them the benefit of the
> doubt as much as possible. And praise to the heavens whatever insights and
> new directions they manage to pioneer.
>
> This is not meant to disagree with John's statements, just add another
> viewpoint that often comes to my mind when I listen to criticisms of
> physics teaching at PHYS-L and AAPT meetings. -Carl
>
> -- 
> Carl E Mungan, Assoc Prof of Physics  410-293-6680 (O) -3729 (F)
> Naval Academy Stop 9c, 572C Holloway Rd, Annapolis MD 21402-1363
> mailto:mungan@usna.edu     http://usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/
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