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Re: Book ideas

As I understand it, you are planning a Chapter 0 with the "tools"
necessary for later Chapters. This would be directly contradictory to the
teachings of Arnold Arons, as I understand them. It is also
contra-indicated by my own experience with students.
Arons emphasized the principle: Don't introduce an
idea until you need it. Don't talk about vectors until you are confronted
by the need for them. Application of this principle is beautifully
illustrated in the first few Chapters (excepting, unfortunately, the very
first) of The Mechanical Universe (the version by Olenick, et al.). The
principle seems to be lost, however, among most authors.
I have tried to follow this principle in my Conceptual Calculus
text. In contrast to existing texts I do NOT start with discussions of
the number system, functions, and limiting processes. And it didn't take
long to realize that I didn't need all that baggage to talk about the
things that I really wanted to talk about.




On Sun, 25 Aug 2002, Robert J. Beichner wrote:

John makes a good point in his comments below. I'll set up a website soon
where everyone's contributions are organized, probably by chapter. I'd still
like to keep the conversation on the list though. Unless this threatens to
completely "take over" Phys-L, I think it will be a fun discussion.

As far as audience goes, this will be a calculus-based book aimed at science
and engineering majors. I want to focus on fundamentals and motivate
learning through introductory real world examples. I'll put the prospectus
on the website for folks who want all the gory details.

And John, I'm looking forward to your ideas when we get to fluids. I really
like your approach to explaining airplane flight in
<http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/how/>.

Bob

On 8/25/02 8:57 AM, "John S. Denker" <jsd@monmouth.com> wrote:

Hi --

If you want contributions to the book, you desperately
need a web site.

This is a big project. If the bits and pieces are spread
amongst many emails, nobody (except possibly you) will be
able to figure out what's going on.

As a particular example: You haven't yet said what is the
intended audience for the book. I'm guessing that it is a
for a college-level calculus-based course. If you mail
out that a message to that effect, that message will have
to "catch up" with all the other messages about the book.
This creates an organizational problem that has to be
solved, separately, by all N collaborators. It would be
better to solve it once-and-for-all by maintaining a
well-organized web site.

Then you just post notices about changes to the web site.

--- jsd
[reply to the list if you like]




--
"But as much as I love and respect you, I will beat you and I will kill
you, because that is what I must do. Tonight it is only you and me, fish.
It is your strength against my intelligence. It is a veritable potpourri
of metaphor, every nuance of which is fraught with meaning."
Greg Nagan from "The Old Man and the Sea" in
<The 5-MINUTE ILIAD and Other Classics>