Re: [Phys-L] Survey of Physics; Hewitt, or not

[Timothy Folkerts <folkertst@nicc.edu>]

John Denker says: " Physics concepts start out like a pile of loose
bricks.  "

That reminds me of a quote I have seen and often present to students in
such a class.  "Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of
stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of
stones is a house"  Henri Poincare.

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On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 6:13 PM John Denker via Phys-l <
phys-l@mail.phys-l.org> wrote:

> On 7/25/20 10:07 AM, Snow POP wrote:
>
> > Though it has some notable flaws, we are still using Hewitt’s
> > “Conceptual Physics.”
>
> Yes, notable flaws.  I am seriously underwhelmed by that book.
>
> IMHO a "survey" course ought to give the students some idea
> of how a scientist would approach a problem.  Hewitt fails at
> this.  He seems to assume that the students are too stupid to
> actually /think/.
>
> Many of the students who sign up for a "survey" course have been
> trained for 12+ years that /reasoning/ is not allowed on school
> grounds, and their low expectations are a good match for Hewitt's
> low expectations.
>
> I have every reason to believe that the students *are* quite
> capable of abstraction, multi-step reasoning, and so on.  You
> see it in the games they play.  It will take time and effort
> to convince them that we really want them to do that in class,
> but it can be done.  (Of course there are always some special-ed
> students who have serious deficits in their reasoning, but they
> don't need to sign up for physics classes.)
>
> I think concepts, properly speaking, are good.  However, the
> word has become twisted.  In some circles, "Conceptual Physics"
> is a euphemism for "Bone-Head Physics".  It doesn't have to
> be that way.
>
> Physics concepts start out like a pile of loose bricks.  As such,
> they will not hold students' interest in the short run, and will
> not be remembered in the long run.  They become interesting,
> useful, and memorable only when they are assembled into some
> sort of structure.  A major hard-to-fix flaw of this book is
> that it fails to put the concepts together.
>
> In addition, there are dozens and dozens of smaller flaws,
> where the book gets the concepts wrong.  If you adopt this
> book, plan on spending a *lot* of time trying to undo the
> damage it causes.
>
> This is not actually the worst book I've ever seen, but it's
> definitely bad.  If you want to think like a cartoonist, this
> is your book.  If you want to think like a scientist, find
> something else.
>
> More details here:
>  https://www.av8n.com/physics/hewitt.htm
> _______________________________________________
> Forum for Physics Educators
> Phys-l@mail.phys-l.org
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