Re: percent success

["Roger A. Pruitt" <phrp@fhsuvm.fhsu.edu>]

David Dockstader wrote:
> We've discussed the 5% that become physics majors and the 95% that don't, but
> I think we also need to consider the 90+% of the total population that never
> take a physics class at all.  Clearly, we can't claim to serve them very well.
> There must be some reason they avoid us.  Word must be out on the street that
> physics classes are bad news.  Who put the word out and why?  Do we care?
> Can or should we do anything about it.

A colleague in physics who is now the Assistant Dean in the College of
Arts and Sciences here once did a study and found two majors that didn't
require any mathematics. The results of this study were presented to an
on-campus conference of high school counselors and principals, who
almost universally expressed surprise that mathematics was required for
so many degrees. Now all students are required, as part of our general
education requirements, to have some mathematics for any degree.
Graduates in the College of Business are required to have a calculus
methods course which has a prerequisit of college algebra. Students
wishing to enroll in college algebra are screened with a mathematics
pretest and receive a minimum score or else are requried to take a
remedial algebra course first. It is quite surprising how many students
need to take this course before the college algebra. Even the algebra
based physics course requires some mathematics skills. Could the
mathematics requirements be the real reason for students to shun
physics?

I used to teach a course called "Physics for Poets" and used March's
book. It was a conceptual course, however, I did some simple algebraic
derivations of basic ideas from time to time. Interestingly, students
would shows signs of math anxiety when I would first do this each
semester, but I would tell them to relax and enjoy the derivation. I
wanted to be complete in my presentation and not leave an 18 minute gap
in their understanding. A clear reference to Nixon's 18 minute gap on
one of the White House tapes. After a few weeks students became quite
comfortable with this style of presentation and the in class
discussions. After several years the enrollment in the class nearly
tripled, and then I turned the teaching over to others. Since then the
class has died. My point here is to reinforce the idea that the
mathematics may be a block to large student enrollments in physics. In
my Physics for Poets course, no mathematics was required of the students
even though I used it from time to time in our discussions to make the
ideas complete and quantitative.

Roger Pruitt