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Re: Energy

I'll go even farther. Is it really so terrible if students coming out of an
Introductory AND Terminal physics course have a 'fluid flow' vision of
energy? Such a vision will work well enough for them in their everyday
lives and is (hopefully) a _more_ accurate and useful model than they
probably had before taking the course.

I will continue to contend that students who go on to higher level courses
in physics SHOULD have the intellectual tools to move beyond early,
simplified, and often inaccurate models to a more sophisticated
understandings. Can we really get across the more abstract models of energy
to students who can't always grasp velocity and acceleration after 1/2 a
semester of intensive work on those topics? I'm not saying 'teach energy
and heat as a fluid flowing', but if that is the image that some student
come away with, that may not really be so awful. ;-)

Rick



Not that it is such a wonder, but I find myself in agreement with
Rick on this point. If they leave us with what is for them a new
understanding of the world which fits a broader range of experience,
then have we not accomplished the fundamental task of teaching?

Obviously as teachers, once we find we can accomplish this we should
begin to ask how can we accomplish more _without sacrificing what we
have so far._

Dewey

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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)426-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)426-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)426-4330
Boise State University dykstrad@email.boisestate.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper: GHB, Uilleann

"As a result of modern research in physics, the ambition and hope,
still cherished by most authorities of the last century, that physical
science could offer a photographic picture and true image of reality
had to be abandoned." --M. Jammer in Concepts of Force, 1957.

"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
and Baby Universes, 1993.

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