s a way of introduction, I should say that this is my first attempt to start a blog. I have, generally, been a private person and I cannot imagine why anyone might be interested in the musings and ruminations of a person they have never met. However, I have developed attitudes, thoughts, reactions, etc. that pertain specifically to physics. By airing them in PF, I might elicit reactions and comments from like-minded individuals and perhaps resolve issues that I have never resolved, reach conclusions that I would have otherwise never reached, adopt new attitudes and so on. I intend to post on this blog material that will always have a physics angle and my personal take of it. Feel free, gentle reader, to comment if so inclined and, by the way, just so that I can be placed in the order of things, I earn my living teaching university physics in the US.
Next: Why the hatred?
Next: Why the hatred?
Physics and I
Why the hatred?
When I was an undergraduate, fellow students asked me what I studied. Hearing "Physics", they almost invariably shook their heads exclaiming "Ohhh" in what I interpreted to be a demonstration of equal amounts of disbelief, compassion and pity. When I reached graduate school the reaction remained nearly the same, but my interpretation of it changed. I read the subtext "Oh, now I understand where you're coming from" tinged perhaps with a soupcon of awe. It was clear I was being profiled on the basis of something totally abstract: other people's attitudes to and perceptions of my chosen field of study, but what's one to do? Parenthetically, I add that my own niece, when she was seven or eight, once asked me quite innocently, "Are you a scientist or are you mad?" How's that for profiling? I guess the stereotypical cartoon character of the mad scientist got to her. She is now a scientist herself and, I am relieved to report, not at all mad.
Anyway, after graduate school and in social circles, "Physics" as an answer to "And what do you do?" more often than not elicited the response "Oh, I took physics in high-school/college/university and I hated it". "Nothing personal, you know?" was sometimes belatedly added. Such responses didn't bother me at all, but it's the "I hated it" that troubled me. If you think about it, hatred is a strong emotion. Perhaps "intensely dislike as something to avoid at all costs" gives a more appropriate description of what these well-meaning people meant. Call it what you want, there is a whole lot of individuals out there with a negative attitude towards physics and I hazard to guess they are mostly people who have had some formal instruction in it. People who have never had the opportunity to study physics go about their everyday business, being successful in what they do despite the fact that theirs is in all likelihood an Aristotelian perception of the world.
What about the physics takers? Whence the negative attitude? I cannot believe that their dislike of physics stems from a bad experience with a bad teacher or a bad course. The dislike is too extensive among their ranks for a simple explanation like that. We are not all bad teachers teaching bad courses. I only have a partial answer. Doing physics calls upon people to perform an unnatural act. To most people, it is unnatural to perceive the world mathematically. We ask our students to examine physical reality, to cast it in concrete mathematical form, to manipulate the form into new mathematical form and, finally, to interpret this new form back into physical reality. So, I guess, the dislike of physics is a manifestation of one's resistance to adopt the "alien" way of perceiving the world; it is more comfortable and less threatening to do business the old way, especially if it makes no difference in their every day life. So what if one confuses velocity with acceleration and thinks that an object thrown straight up has zero acceleration at the top of the trajectory? Never mind that, if both the acceleration and the velocity are zero, the object is and will remain at rest. "What goes up must come down", no?
Next: Why the fear?
When I was an undergraduate, fellow students asked me what I studied. Hearing "Physics", they almost invariably shook their heads exclaiming "Ohhh" in what I interpreted to be a demonstration of equal amounts of disbelief, compassion and pity. When I reached graduate school the reaction remained nearly the same, but my interpretation of it changed. I read the subtext "Oh, now I understand where you're coming from" tinged perhaps with a soupcon of awe. It was clear I was being profiled on the basis of something totally abstract: other people's attitudes to and perceptions of my chosen field of study, but what's one to do? Parenthetically, I add that my own niece, when she was seven or eight, once asked me quite innocently, "Are you a scientist or are you mad?" How's that for profiling? I guess the stereotypical cartoon character of the mad scientist got to her. She is now a scientist herself and, I am relieved to report, not at all mad.
Anyway, after graduate school and in social circles, "Physics" as an answer to "And what do you do?" more often than not elicited the response "Oh, I took physics in high-school/college/university and I hated it". "Nothing personal, you know?" was sometimes belatedly added. Such responses didn't bother me at all, but it's the "I hated it" that troubled me. If you think about it, hatred is a strong emotion. Perhaps "intensely dislike as something to avoid at all costs" gives a more appropriate description of what these well-meaning people meant. Call it what you want, there is a whole lot of individuals out there with a negative attitude towards physics and I hazard to guess they are mostly people who have had some formal instruction in it. People who have never had the opportunity to study physics go about their everyday business, being successful in what they do despite the fact that theirs is in all likelihood an Aristotelian perception of the world.
What about the physics takers? Whence the negative attitude? I cannot believe that their dislike of physics stems from a bad experience with a bad teacher or a bad course. The dislike is too extensive among their ranks for a simple explanation like that. We are not all bad teachers teaching bad courses. I only have a partial answer. Doing physics calls upon people to perform an unnatural act. To most people, it is unnatural to perceive the world mathematically. We ask our students to examine physical reality, to cast it in concrete mathematical form, to manipulate the form into new mathematical form and, finally, to interpret this new form back into physical reality. So, I guess, the dislike of physics is a manifestation of one's resistance to adopt the "alien" way of perceiving the world; it is more comfortable and less threatening to do business the old way, especially if it makes no difference in their every day life. So what if one confuses velocity with acceleration and thinks that an object thrown straight up has zero acceleration at the top of the trajectory? Never mind that, if both the acceleration and the velocity are zero, the object is and will remain at rest. "What goes up must come down", no?
Next: Why the fear?
Total Comments 4
Comments
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I've also wondered about why so many find physics difficult. I don't claim to have figured it out, but I think one reason is that there is little to no room to B.S. your way through a homework or exam problem, unlike say an English class. Plus the extensive use of math, as you mentioned, which gives many problems right from the start. Many algebra students do okay with abstract problems, but give them a dreaded word problem where the symbols actually represent something and they are lost.Posted Aug22-09 at 02:25 PM by Redbelly98 
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Thanks for the comment, Redbelly. Actually, that's where I'm headed in my next installment. However, the disabling of the B.S. mode, I think, results more in fear and apprehension and less in "hatred" and intense dislike. I will argue that one can do something to address the former directly, but not the latter.Posted Aug23-09 at 08:50 AM by kuruman
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In my opinion, it is mostly a stereotype. The one who has the loudest voice says that physics is crap the everyone tends to agree without even having somewhat understood what physics is about.
On the other hand, I would also agree that it is fear, mostly from the math which is not the favorite subject of many students. Since physics involves a lot of math, it scares most of the students away.
By the way, I am talking about high school students since I am yet to start studies at a university.Posted Aug24-09 at 03:11 AM by kbaumen
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Frankly, I suspect that physicists have no more to complain of in such matters than any of the hard sciences or even the formal "sciences" (I prefer to call the latter the "formal disciplines", mainly maths, philosophy, and logic. If you can suggest any other examples, go ahead.)
Not many people make more sense of biology than phys, and most people's reaction to chem is about as enthusiastic as you describe.
My own experience might be illuminating. I was a very lazy student in a biological direction and would have failed those courses too, except that I had enough general knowledge to scrape through. I did poorly in maths at school, but had enough aptitude to find the maths problems in elementary phys & chem insignificant. Physics I bored me and I was surprised when a physics doctor in industry told me in informal conversation that he suspected that if I ever got into third or fourth year physics I probably would find it interesting. I later learned to suspect that he could be right. I got interested in chem for reasons of smells and bangs, and did a lot of extramural reading. By the time that that interest had lapsed, the interest in the basic subject matter had begun to stick, and the interest remains. Some reading in semi-formal relativity and similar matters increased my interest in physics. Eventually I moved informally into computer work and remained there till I retired.
OK. So much for me. There was some talent, poorly directed, probably because of undiagnosed ADH and sloth. Looking about me I find a lot of people (the majority I think) who couldn't give a damn, and as far as I can see never would or will.
The next commonest are those who like a bit of gee-whizzery if it means dangerous explosions, lots of noise, and possibly animals with big teeth or funny faces or genitalia. They can sustain an interest in such things as long as it lasts for minutes rather than hours, and as long as there isn't sex or war on another channel.
Then there are folks with reasonable talent, but poor backing to sustain their momentum in scientific studies. They might have done OK, except that science was painfully unfashionable in their circles.
Then the ones with fine talent and drive, but intelligent enough to realise that they would make more money as carpenters or businessmen.
Then there are the idiots, with all the talent, but too little sense to come in out of the rain. They mostly take a vow of poverty.
And I am to believe in the continued survival of the species?
On which cheerful note,
Cheers,
Jon RichfieldPosted Apr4-10 at 08:22 AM by Jon Richfield
