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Re: College nowadays - What "should" students know?



The question of what belongs in a high school physics program is a great
one. Assuming the students are of the sort who will be taking some general
physics course in college but will not be using the high school course to
replace it, I think the high school teacher has a great deal of latitude.
There will most certainly be some students in the college course who had no
high school physics, and your students should have an advantage over them,
almost regardless of the topics you choose. At the same time, as a college
physics teacher I find it far better to start at the beginning rather than
assume that all of the students come with some starting knowledge.
Certainly, the course moves quickly at the beginning, but it is the way
textbooks are written, so the material is there for the student.
That said, I do have a preference for high school topics. Certainly
just about any physics course will have a section on kinematics and
Newton's laws. After that, I would concentrate on many of the "fun things"
that we (due to time constraints similar to yours) are often forced to skip
in our two semester course from a book that could easily occupy three-four
semesters. I am thinking of topics such as sound waves, elasticity,
thermodynamics (though much is probably taught in chemistry - check with
your colleagues), fluids, and practical electric circuits (DC and AC).
Choose topics that interest you - you'll likely do a better job with them.
And good luck with the new schedule. I suspect you will grow to prefer it
to the larger number of shorter sections, thought it is too bad the total
time was cut so much.
Dale L. Orth
Asst. Prof. of Chemistry and Physics
Wisconsin Lutheran College
dale_orth@wlc.edu