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Re: [Phys-L] widget rate puzzle ... reasoning, scaling, et cetera



Wow! Well, kids are born into this world of gadgets, and all they want to
do is text each
other.* It will only get worse over time, making our jobs more difficult.
Hard to learn physics
if you have weak reasoning skills, weak math skills, don't like tinkering,
or are not curious
about how the world works.

*This has little to do with physics, but a faculty member posted this TED
talk. I have watched it
several times, and agree with what she says. The future for educators does
not look good...

www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together

I wish our entire faculty could watch and discuss this video...



Phys-L@Phys-L.org writes:
The state of modern youth.

Last week I was teaching right hand rules and we got to the topic of
magnetic fields and motors. This is a small class in a small private
school of 30 total enrollment in the school and the so-called physics
class has four students (yes that's right... four teenage boys.) Three
of the boys have never played with a motor and never even tore a battery
apart to see what it made it "tick". I said when I was their age we got
our hands dirty tearing things apart; mixing chemicals in the basement
with our Gilbert chemistry sets; building cranes and ferris wheels with
our erector sets. . They laughed and said, "Mr. Weiss... you grew up in
the olden days." It wasn't always like this... A few years back one boy
had brought in a huge motor he ripped from an old broken upright freezer
and we spend days exploring it and getting really dirty along the way. I
mentioned it to these three boys and do you know what they said? "That
kid was a nerd." A nerd? For getting down and dir
ty and l
oving to do something with his hands and learning how things work? In
fact, one boy in this current class showed me his iPhone and said, "This
is our world. I don't need to know how motors work. All I have to know
is how to get things done on this." This is supposed to be a physics
class? If they didn't have to take physics I'm sure they would rather
take a free period, search on Twitter or Facebook and while away the time
watching funny antics of cats and dogs performing tricks.


On Jan 1, 2015, at 5:54 PM, Anthony Lapinski wrote:

I, like most teachers on this list, like these simple thinking problems.
Most students, at least the ones I teach, don't. They can't/don't think
like we do. They don't really care about these ratio/scaling problems
as they find them irrelevant. They feel the same way about most of
what they learn in math classes. In physics, they just want a formula
to solve a problem. Their critical thinking skills are generally poor,
mainly because they are not taught how to critically think in high
school. What courses do this, besides physics? And with all the new
handheld devices these days, students are weaker at fixing things
and solving real problems. However, they can text very efficiently!
Sad...
I assume others on this list feel the same way.

I also like the question about making the sides of a square and triangle
two times longer. I might incorporate some of these into my "placement"
survey I give each year to assess kids' thinking skills and whether they
are in
the right physics class (honors or regular).

When I teach electricity, I give each student a battery, bulb, and wire
and ask them to make it light. Most can't initially. I tell them not to
look at their neighbors and what they are doing. I eventually give them
some hints, and they all eventually get it. It's a good thinking
activity
for kids
at any level (regular, honors, even middle school). I then show the
Harvard
video clip, where the graduates can't do this simple task. These are
"smart"
kids ("engineers") who don't know the basics of electricity. Maybe they
were
never taught?



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