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Perhaps you have hit on the crux of the problem?
Why should a textbook be written by ONE person? If you could find
someone who knows mechanics (or part of it) well enough, and another for
Thermo., and another for Optics, etc. you could spread the workload and
get a reasonable assurance that each section will have a higher accuracy.
It then requires an 'editor' to read it for grammar, punctuation, etc.
and to attempt to make it have a 'common voice' -- but that is not an
insurmountable task.
While we're on the subject, you could then finally write a book and LEAVE
OUT the problem sets. Y'know, the ones that they constantly reshuffle
meaninglessly to justify a new edition, and which causes havoc with
syllabi everywhere. In this age of the Internet, just leave it out of
the book and put problem sets online where they can be easily: edited
and corrected.
That's just my 2 cents worth,
Peter Schoch
On Jul 11, 2013, at 12:30 PM, Carl Mungan <mungan@usna.edu> wrote:
hardIn particular, Mazur is right that there is a treeeeemendous amount
of nonsense in typical physics classes and physics textbooks. I'm
talking about
a) some stuff that is just plain wrong,
b) some stuff that is 100 years out of date,
c) some stuff that is ludicrously impractical, for no good reason,
d) some discussions and diagrams that are confused and confusing,
I agree with this paragraph. But at the same time, it makes me
uncomfortable for the following reason. I personally think it's very
to write an introductory physics textbook (let's say a first edition, toelse
make the point extra sharp). Much much harder than probably anything
that we physicists can write. We're experts in our research fields, andcan
have fairly high confidence that when we write a research article oradvances.
monograph, it's probably going to well established. (Even if it's got
errors in it, those will be found and fixed as the research field
Some errors are even very helpful in that they attract people to work onwhat
showing what's wrong with them and what's better about some other view.)
But who can claim to be an expert in every field of physics, which is
an intro text has to cover (more or less)? In fact, a textbook writerwill
necessarily base much of his (her) writing on how he learned the stuffand
what others have written. But we all know how new misconceptions and newanything!
views of how to teach intro physics are constantly appearing.
How easy to therefore become paralyzed into not daring to write
Because most of it is going to fall into categories a to d aboveamount of
eventually. Maybe not today, but maybe next year or next decade.
So for that reason I think we need to give textbook writers a big
encouragement and applaud their courage and give them the benefit of theand
doubt as much as possible. And praise to the heavens whatever insights
new directions they manage to pioneer.
This is not meant to disagree with John's statements, just add another
viewpoint that often comes to my mind when I listen to criticisms of
physics teaching at PHYS-L and AAPT meetings. -Carl
--
Carl E Mungan, Assoc Prof of Physics 410-293-6680 (O) -3729 (F)
Naval Academy Stop 9c, 572C Holloway Rd, Annapolis MD 21402-1363
mailto:mungan@usna.edu ; http://usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/
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