Re: physics before math????

[Rick Tarara <rbtarara@SPRYNET.COM>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Edmiston" <edmiston@BLUFFTON.EDU>
> * * * Opinion strongly stated here. * * *
>
> If your high school is pushing for physics in the first year of high
school,
> watch out.  What are the motives?  I think there is strong motive among
the
> biologists and some chemists to attempt a switch with the physicists.  For
> years the physics teacher has gotten the cream of the crop because the
> ho-hum students have already satisfied their science requirement before
they
> got to physics.  The biologists want to turn that around.  Let the hoards
of
> students with zero science interest take physics instead of biology.  Then
> let us teach some more advanced biology.  In the schools I have examined
> that are pushing for this, I see essentially no scientific logic behind
> their push.  It seems totally based upon selfish motives.

Actually, there is a strong push for the Physics First curriculum led by
Physicists such as Leon Lederman.  The logic is the flow of the sciences.
Biology can be viewed as applied Chemistry and Chemistry as Applied
Physics--but we teach the sequence backwards.  Unfortunately for this
Physics, Chemistry, Biology sequence, the preferred 'language' of all three
sciences is (or should be) math-based.  The Physics-First movement really
wants a science course ALL four years of HS.  The three basic courses and
then an elective, advanced course in the science of the Student's Choice.
{At least that's how I remember it from a talk by Leon a couple years ago.}

Rick

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Richard W. Tarara
Associate Professor of Physics
Department of Chemistry & Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
219-284-4664
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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