Re: little gee and its sign

[Robert Cohen <Robert.Cohen@PO-BOX.ESU.EDU>]

In his post (see below), JSD has hit on something that has been bothering me
about this conversation.  In my experiences, many students do not show an
ability to distinguish between superficial understanding and, how do I say
it, a "more complete" understanding.  In other words, their ability to
self-reflect and self-evaluate is weak.

I wonder if this may be the problem here instead of some "inability" to do
scaling or whatever.

Perhaps someone on the list can provide information to confirm or deny my
suspicions?

----------------------------------------------------------
| Robert Cohen               Department of Physics       |
|                            East Stroudsburg University |
| rcohen@po-box.esu.edu      East Stroudsburg, PA  18301 |
| http://www.esu.edu/~bbq/   (570) 422-3428              |
----------------------------------------------------------

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John S. Denker [mailto:jsd@MONMOUTH.COM]
> Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 3:11 PM
> To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
> Subject: Re: little gee and its sign
[snip]
> Any student who cannot distinguish statements about one
> member of a class
> (one particular acceleration) from generalizations about all
> members of a
> class (all accelerations) has a linguistic and/or conceptual
> deficit of the
> most profound sort.  This deficit must be dealt with.  It
> must be dealt
> with directly.
>
> Until this deficit has been overcome, talking about physics
> concepts (such
> mass, force, acceleration) is hopelessly remote from the real problem.
[snip]