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Re: [Phys-L] Sun going around the Earth?



Interesting discussion!

Well, there is much scientific evidence supporting the heliocentric
theory. The Earth certainly appears flat and motionless, and people
believed this for thousands of years. The Flat Earth Society still exists!

Many things in science we (and students) must take on faith, from atoms
and electrons to distant stars and galaxies -- things most of have never
seen (and never will).

I tell my students that you can't prove you were born! I'm no expert, but
I think memory cells aren't fully developed until 18 months or so. And
while
someone could have recorded your birth, you still have no memory of it.
And
what we don't personally observe we must take on faith/evidence.

Everyone, I'm curious -- what's your oldest memory? For me, it was when I
was
around four years old. That's when my "existence" began!

This can lead to interesting discussions in the classroom!

Phys-L@Phys-L.org writes:
Of course from the point of view of students in HS they generally can not
come up with any good evidence for why we insist that the Earth goes
around
the Sun. They have been told it so much that they parrot it back without
any evidence to back it up. Every observation they cite can be explained
either way.

"An Inquiry into Science Education, Where the Rubber Meets the Road" is a
little book which should be read by all science educators. In it the
author
convinces most students during a summer institute that they have no
evidence
for which is true. He gets them to understand the difference between
evidence and just accepting what they have been told. When he asks them
at
the end to write out how they they know the Sun goes around the Earth,
they
now tend to say "It could be either according to what I know."

The observations of the other planets can be explained in an Earth
centered
system as long as you do not try to figure the mechanism behind the
orbits.
An important piece in the puzzle is the Foucault pendulum which shows that
the Earth is rotating. Then of course there are things like large
whirlpools and weather patterns. MS and HS students do not generally
understand this. Actually I bet most college students do not know about
it
either, even in science classes. Can the pendulum be explained along with
an Earth centered system?

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

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