Re: 'plug & chug' problems

[Joseph Bellina <jbellina@SAINTMARYS.EDU>]

My experience in this department of chemistry and physics is that our
chemistry faculty are frequently frustrated by their TA's lack of
ability when making chemical solutions for lab setups.  This tells me
that "solvable by a proportion" does not mean being able to think by
proportional reasoning.
I grant you that the world is not linear, but if they can't first
understand (and distinct from compute) proportionally, I'm not sure how
well they will do with more complex situations.

On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Bob
Sciamanda wrote:

> Interesting.  One of the banes of my teaching of pre-med etc types was
> that they came to me from a Chemistry course where they learned that every
> problem is solvable by a proportion.  IOW they knew only a linear world
> and immediately extrapolated from a functional dependence to a linear
> relation - hard to break!
>
> Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
> Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
> trebor@velocity.net
> http://www.velocity.net/~trebor
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joseph Bellina" <jbellina@SAINTMARYS.EDU>
> To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2002 11:44 AM
> Subject: Re: 'plug & chug' problems
>
>
> | Interesting comment, in particular the call for proportional reasoning.
> | How many people actually attend to that...how many textbooks work on it
> | explicitly?  I suspect few.
> |
> | cheers,
> |
> | joe
>
>
>
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Joseph J. Bellina, Jr.               574-284-4662
Associate Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556