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Re: emergency egress



You've now refused to answer the question 3 times--in fact you are defiant
about not answering in the message below. O'Reilly would have cut off your
mike by now! ;-)

Please do so yourself--enough already !

Rick

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Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Green" <JMGreen@SISNA.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 2:46 PM
Subject: Re: emergency egress



Well, Ludwik, I guess that you have established my point: We all
"understand' the garbaged physics -- and teach it -- That is the pity.

Jim,

Please take a stab at Ludwik's suggestion. I'd be interested to read how
you
phrase it.

-Tim

Well, Tim, if I believed that anyone really wanted to improve his/her
teaching re the treatment of "energy", we could enter into this discussion
-- privately -- as a few have done in the past. I have helped some
re-write their labs in fact.

But I currently believe that after all Leigh Palmer, and I, and some
others
have said over the past many months, those who want to improve in this
regard have already done so. Others just want to generate excuses to
continue teaching the way they always have. Some may even say "Well, I
know it is incorrect, but I don't want to change -- It is just too
hard! -- I don't get paid enough!"

Any one of us could say it correctly (it is not difficult), we just don't
want to.

I well understand why there is this problem: Someone in the distant past
talked about "energy" as a substantive fluid ie as "stuff" -- maybe Young
himself -- Others used the same language -- Teachers of physics adopted
the
language -- Their students adopted that language -- They became teachers
and worse, authors -- Their students read those texts and became teachers
-- Their students became teachers -- and by and by we have come to this
garbaged mess.

And most just don't want to change -- Hell it was good enough for Young,
it
should be good enough for me -- and my unaware students -- after all what
do they know.


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