Re: Electric Force and Shells

["RAUBER, JOEL" <JOEL_RAUBER@SDSTATE.EDU>]

> I can
> honestly admit with a clear and unashamed conscience that my
> undergraduate "education" in physics taught me
> A-B-S-O-L-U-T-E-L-Y N-O-T-H-I-N-G other than how to work a
> small subset of problems.

My honest opinion is I don't believe the above.

> Only when I got to grad school did
> any of it BEGIN to make sense (thank's Drs. Muir, Clark, and
> Danford!!!).

If your undergraduate preparation had been as bad as you claim I doubt that
you would have survived graduate school.  At least the undergraduate
preparation prepared your mind to be able to finally figure things out in
graduate school.  Sometimes, not even then but, as you say below, after
teaching it five times.  This is known as the spiral method of learning.  I
think physics requires a lot or revisiting of topics for mere mortals (like
me and you) to get it.  But blaming the first go around or two I think is
rather inaccurate.  I think most people have to hit Gauss' law e.g. several
times before getting it. The undergraduate curriculum often gets blamed
because it had the misfortune of being the first two go arounds.

I'll end my sermon now, my grandfather was a Lutheran Minister.  So it is
once removed for me, therefore the shorter sermon.  :-)

> If I had been required to pass an exit exam as
> an undergrad, I never would have graduated. I'm no dummy
> either. The problem is how physics is taught, or in most
> . . .

<much snipped>
> Please excuse the sermon, but after all, my father was a
> Methodist minister. ;-)
>
>
> Cheers,
> Joe

Joel Rauber