Re: Reality

[Jerome Epstein <jerepst@worldnet.att.net>]

It is astonishingly easy to lecture to our students for years on end,
have them solve many pen and paper problems from the back of the
chapter, and still leave them utterly ignorant of what the phenomena
mean in the real world which these equations are supposed to describe.
Hence, the lightbulb phenomenon.
				J. Epstein
> We can do this instead of lecturing (or alongside lecturing even) in
> the nontraditional courses like Chabay & Sherwood; Law's Workshop
> Physics; CalTech/MIT's ZAP! etc.  We can and should do a lot to remedy
> this missing critical phenomenological experience even at the expense
> of lecturing.  If our student nonmajors don't have this experience before
> our courses and don't get it in our courses then WE GRADUATE THEM WITHOUT
> IT. How many of us graduate students who can't describe how a light bulb
> works or how a current-carrying coil experiences torque in a magnetic
> field but can solve series and parallel resistor problems and perhaps
> even Kirchhoff's law problems?
>
> Dan M
>
> Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
> danmac@nau.edu  http://www.phy.nau.edu/~danmac/homepage.html