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Re: [Phys-L] The Make-Believe World of Real-World Physics



On 07/12/2013 08:49 AM, Rauber, Joel wrote:
|
| -- We do *not* do hard problems in this class.
| ++ We do important problems.
| ++ We do interesting problems.
| ++ We do problems that /would be hard/ if you didn't know the
| right technique for solving them. So, let's get started learning
| some useful techniques......
|


What's so bad about saying that we *do* hard problems in this class
and that is one of many reasons the class is worthwhile; we learn
techniques for dealing with hard problems and you will that much the
better off for it. This doesn't differ much from the above as what
I'm calling a "hard problem" seems to be referred to as "would be
hard" in the above. However, the distinction is not to be scared off
by problem just because someone says it's hard, even if the someone
is yourself.

AFAICT we have the same idea, just slightly different wording, and
I'm not going to argue about wording. De gustibus non disputandum.

FWIW, my thinking on this is colored by my experience as a flight
instructor. In most ways, flying an airplane is easier than doing
physics ... except that the scary parts are very much scarier.
So any flight instructor is an expert on teaching how to handle
seemingly-scary problems, far beyond anything your average physics
student can even imagine.

However, I insist:
-- We do *not* deal with scary problems.
++ We deal with problems that /would have been scary/ if you
didn't know to handle them.

All experience indicates that there is no advantage in scaring the
students. For example, many students have heard through the grapevine
that stalls are terrifying. So, when teaching about stalls, the
recommended procedure is to practice the stall _recovery_ maneuver
without actually stalling the airplane. It's no big deal. We
practice that about a gazillion times. Then I fly the plane for a
few minutes in the stalled condition, while the student just watches,
and becomes convinced that the airplane is not going to drop out of
the sky. Finally I let the student do a stall and a stall recovery.
At this point, it is no big deal. The student was never anywhere
near being scared. By the end of the training program, the student
can fly around all day with the stall warning horn on. It's no big
deal.

By way of contrast: If I wanted to scare a student, I could
certainly do that. I could create a simulated emergency that
would scare the pants off anybody not trained to handle it
... but I'm not going to.

I've talked with lots of people in the aftermath of emergencies,
simulated and real. In answer to the question "Were you scared?",
the usual (and best) answer is "No, I didn't have time to be
scared. I was too busy dealing with the situation."

I've thought about this a lot:
-- We do *not* deal with scary problems.
++ We deal with important problems.
++ We deal with interesting problems.
++ We deal with problems that /would have been scary/ if you
didn't know to handle them.