[Phys-L] Re: Ambiguous Question

[Dan MacIsaac <Dan.MacIsaac@NAU.EDU>]

On Nov 16, 2005, at 7:00 PM, John Denker wrote:
> Edmiston, Mike wrote:
> > The dog walks 3 meters toward the dock.  After this walk, how far
> > is the
> > dog from the dock?
>
> > The professor says that since they were studying center of mass, it
> > should have been obvious
>
> Obvious?  Obvious???  Whether or not it "should" have been obvious, it
> wasn't obvious.  If it really had been obvious, we wouldn't be having
> thism conversation.  The professor thought it would be obvious ... but
> he was wrong about this.

I describe these as "Mighty Kreskin Questions" after the late
entertainer who did a mentalist act claiming to "read people's
minds."  Students in effect are rewarded for trying to guess what the
teacher means, and sometimes it's a trivial as guessing the noun.
All teachers inadvertently use Mighty Kreskin Questions at one time
or another, and it's quite remarkable how much students are willing
to play what often seem to students to be the teacher's silly and
meaningless games.   They're quite patient with us.

I observe a lot of physics teachers as part of my job, and I have
been quite stunned at times to observe a teacher give what seemed to
me a completely uninterpretable task that students unquestioningly
carried out.  Many of the students even achieved the desired result,
which I could then use to try and figure out what the teacher was
teaching.  Trained experience is strong and people naturally work
hard to try and make sense out of instructions.

Dan MacIsaac, Associate Professor of Physics, SUNY-Buffalo State College
222SciBldg BSC, 1300 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo NY 14222 USA 716-878-3802
<macisadl@buffalostate.edu>  <http://PhysicsEd.BuffaloState.edu>

>
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