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In particular, I've noticed for several years that many of my top
physicists don't earn A's in my course. This is because lab work counts
toward their grade, and they often don't write up the labs.
This doesn't mean that they're lazy. The students I'm thinking of do the
labs...in fact, they usually get their lab partners through with superior
results. They show extraordinary curiosity and often do labs on their own,
and study physics topics independently. They seek extra challenge put a
great deal of extra time into the study of physics. Their test scores are
excellent to amazing. They love physics and they're really good at it.
They just don't see any point in writing up the lab for my judgment when
they already understand the lab.
It's not just my students, either. There was a posting about Banting, the
Nobel laureate, and his lousy grades (I deleted it by mistake). His lousy
grades were taken as evidence of the superior standards of his time. But I
think there's another point that's missing here: the great scientists
often have lousy academic records.
Darwin was pretty much out-and-out told he was useless for anything.
Einstein had trouble at just about every level, and wound up in the patent
office partly because he couldn't get recommendations. Galileo got in
constant trouble with professors for challenging Aristotelian physics.
Schwinger flunked a chemistry course. James Watson, if I recall correctly,
was exempted from his university's doctoral requirement in organic
chemistry after he almost blew up the lab. Newton wasn't considered any
good academically until he beat up the class bully and decided to beat him
in school as well. After that, he made himself number one
academically...but only paid enough attention to his schoolwork to stay
number one, and spent the rest of the time playing with toys. Mendel
wanted to be a science teacher, but flunked the exam.... The more I read,
the longer the list gets.
Am I missing something here?
Digby Willard