Re: Physics First

[Jim Green <JMGreen@SISNA.COM>]

I am in full accord with Michael Edmiston, who said in part --

> I think the freshman year should be a physical science course blending
> physics and chemistry.  The course would indeed start out with physics and
> migrate toward chemistry.
>
> Then, when students take a fairly standard biology course as sophomores,
> they have done exactly what the physics-first people have advocated.  They
> learned some physics, then some chemistry, then some biology.  But at this
> level it was only the equivalent of half a year of physics and half a year
> of chemistry (integrated together).  But that's okay.  At the freshman
> level, without the math skills, half a year equivalence each of physics and
> chemistry is appropriate.

It would seem that a prevailing assumption is that the more students who
take a physics class, the more great physicists will emerge. But the real
feeling seems to be that the more students who take physics the safer my
physics teaching job will be.

I don't think that either assumption is valid:

I would hold that there are only so many people on this planet who have the
capacity to make a difference in physics and that teaching physics to more
HS students won't change that much,

I would hold that meaningful physics can't be taught in one year in any
case.  It was Harvey Fletcher who, after I gave an overview of what I
though my future might hold, suggested that I major in physics.  Wow, I
thought.  I was not daunted by the subject, but that one could actually
_major_ in such a field.  I thought that physics was a single class -- like
American History.  I had already taken physics in HS and got an A.  He
laughed.  He explained that physics can't be learned one time through, that
physics needs to be reviewed and integrated with increasing intensity.  One
is exposed to these ideas in grammar school science classes (hopefully) and
then again in HS and then again in college and then again in upper division
courses and then again in graduate school and then one teaches for a few
years and THEN one starts to feel that s/he has a bit of a grasp of the
subjects -- the major refinement of each step comes mostly from having
increasingly knowledgeable teachers -- eventually who actually know what
the are talking about! -- in many cases.

If physics is to be taught early in HS, it will not produce more great
physicists not offer increased  job security unless provision is made to
teach physics repeatedly.

Just me over here in my little corner.

Jim Green
mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen