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On Sun, 8 Feb 1998, Rick Tarara wrote:
Let me respond with my very first thoughts on this. WHO CARES?
So I posed two simple demos, easy and inexpensive to do. And if teacher
and student see these and aren't surprised and intrigued by them, then
they aren't seriously in the game. They challenge our understanding. If
our "simple understanding" of force and motion can't deal with these, then
maybe it wasn't very powerful or useful understanding after all. It may
even have been wrong. What's the use of understanding which can't be
successfully applied to *new* experiences, even ones you don't happen to
care about? And what relevance does "caring about" something have to do
with it anyway?
I had another motive. To challenge those who crow about how they
teach "conceptual physics" and who emphasize "simple" explanations over
mathematical ones. I wonder, sometimes whether it's all smoke and
mirrors accomplishing nothing but a feel-good *illusion* of understanding.
Perhaps it includes some of the "lies" we've been talking about lately.
Oh, yes. These two examples *do* demonstrate aspects of physics which are
applicable in many other situations.
I THINK that I am gaining some insight on the rubber band experiment
-- Donald
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Dr. Donald E. Simanek Office: 717-893-2079
Professor of Physics FAX: 717-893-2048
Lock Haven University, Lock Haven, PA. 17745
dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek
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