Re: [Phys-l] Sir, Can We Do Something Easier?

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@hep.anl.gov>]

I sya, "Nuts!"

There is plenty of evidence that it is a matter of the personality of the 
teacher.  Just for a non-physics starter, walk into a popular neighborhood 
bar (or pub, if you're English; or Officer's Club, if you're in service) 
and you'll find someone holding an audience spellbound with a description 
of the grass growing, day-to-day, in his back yard.
	 I did my student teaching in the late '80's at a public high school
of about 1800.  The head of the science department was a physics teacher,
and he'd made the course so popular that the school required 3 physics
teachers to handle the load, plus one or two additional to teach the
earth science course.
	You have already met the enemy, and, truly, he is us, as is 
probably evident from the postings on this net.  I believe that the 
missing art, for many, is the art of communicating at the emotional (as 
opposed to intellectual) level, what it was that you found to be fun about 
physics.
	To avoid leaving you with a vague generality, let me pass on what 
a young graduate student once told me about why she became an 
archeologist: "When I was a little girl, I fell in love with the garbage 
man who would drive by our house each day in a truck with a huge load of 
what must have been all sorts of wonderful things."
	If you can communicate with the students at the level of the 
mystery of the garbage man then you will, I suspect attract the students 
to your class.  On the other hand, if you pontificate about the "fun of 
physics" ... eat your heart out.
				Regards,
					Jack

On Thu, 17 Aug 2006, Edmiston, Mike wrote:

> I especially like the final quotation from Sanford Smith... "you
> shouldn't have to work that hard to make physics exciting, because ... "
> - he pauses, on the edge of the great unmentionable - "it is exciting.
> You just need to know enough about it."
>
> That seems a difficult hurdle... Getting students sufficiently into
> physics that they see the excitement.
>
>
>
> Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
> Professor of Chemistry and Physics
> Bluffton University
> Bluffton, OH 45817
> (419)-358-3270
> edmiston@bluffton.edu
>
> _______________________________________________
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--
"Trust me.  I have a lot of experience at this."
		General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
		just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley