Re: Internal or external?

[Ludwik Kowalski <KowalskiL@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU>]

If I were to lecture, or to write a textbook, I would follow this
advice (see below). But in the non lecturing environment I often
have to react at once on the basis what happens. Even if the initiative
taken by a student is wrong I would not stop it. Let us go and see
where it leads. Let make mistakes and learn from them. At least
ideally that how I am supposed to react according to new (and also
very old) pedagogical philosophers.

I am new to this art and things are often not perfect. But overall I
have no evidence that students learn less than when I was lecturing
(trying to be as accurate as possible and not knowing what was
going in student's heads). Fortunately I have only 20 students.
Only ten or five would even be better, but not two or three. I will
ask them about tensions next Tuesday and the free body diagrams
are not going to be ignored. I agree that they are essential.
Ludwik Kowalski

Leigh wrote:

> I feel exactly as Michael and Joel do. Ludwik, if you want to
> show your students that your interpretation makes sense, don't
> do it with Atwood's machine. Simply show them the problem
> of two blocks on a horzontal frictionless surface, connected by
> a string and pulled along by a string attached to one of the blocks.
> That way the same lesson comes out, and there is no confusion
> of directions or conventions. The equations can be the same as
> those you get with Atwood's machine with the difference in ....