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[Phys-L] Re: Energy is primary and fundamental?



On Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:45:10 -0500
jbellina <jbellina@SAINTMARYS.EDU> wrote:
There is, of course, the greater problem of finding a publisher. On
the other hand, one could self-publish via the web.

I'm quite sure its been done, but for the life of me I can' t recall
who did it.

joe
On Aug 10, 2005, at 1:30 PM, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

On Wednesday, Aug 10, 2005, Joe Bellina wrote:

. . . I am only suggesting that you need to be careful to
give force some sort of unexamined primacy. Given
that, you could start with energy...you just have to
work out the pedagogy, which I think has been done.

What would be extremely useful, to those who teach introductory
physics
courses, to have a textbook in which material is organized along the
100% energy-first basis.

While this is indeed a very attractive idea, there is one important
factor that needs to be considered. Many introductory students are at
a lower level of thinking. The research shows that to raise these
students you must work from the concrete to the abstract. By starting
with energy you may be foreclosing the ability to raise student's
thinking.

There is a great deal of virtue in having them do labs where they have
to make simple concrete measurements. This is precisely the route
which has been taken by the researchers including the Modelers with a
great deal of success.

By starting with energy you are starting with a very abstract concept.
Indeed it is a concept which has been characterized as being at the
theoretical level by Lawson. He found that such concepts are only
readily grasped by students above the formal operational level, or at
what he terms the theoretical level. How do you still get them to
work with more "simple" descriptive concepts such as distance, time
...

Now energy first may work, but you still must consider how to raise
student thinking. At present this consideration is usually not being
done, even in the conventional sequence. BTW Laws found that you get
better understanding by doing momentum before energy. How does this
affect the idea that energy should be done first?

It seems to me that such a text had already been written, but I can
not remember where or when.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX