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?
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Posted Sep24-09 at 12:12 PM by kuruman (Physics and I)
David's Dictum
"You can't give it away." That's what David, a veteran physics teacher, explained to me after I gave my first exam ever in an introductory physics course. By this he meant that, even if one tells the students what is going to be on the exam, there will always be a group who will mess up. A corollary of his dictum is that there will always be a second group (perhaps overlapping the first) who will complain. This came after I lamented that, even though "I...
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Views 5219
Comments 5
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Posted Sep13-09 at 02:01 PM by kuruman (Physics and I)
Updated Sep24-09 at 09:12 PM by kuruman
(Fix typo)
For thee I sing
Soon after I first met my wife, she told me that she likes to sing and would I sing with her? "I can't sing", I said. "Nonsense, everybody can sing", she replied. (This took place years before the advent of talent television shows wherein vocally challenged contenders are living proof that her hypothesis was unwarranted.) I said, "Well, maybe everybody can, but I can't. If I started to sing, all the dogs in the neighborhood would start...
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Views 5422
Comments 6
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Posted Sep4-09 at 09:53 AM by kuruman (Physics and I)
Updated Sep4-09 at 05:31 PM by kuruman
(Corrected typo)
What happened to Anna? Followup and denouement
I did not mention a few of details about Anna in order not to detract from the narrative. Anna was a physics major headed for medical school, the course was intermediate Electricity and Magnetism and the question was the somewhat involved boundary conditions problem of finding the magnetic field inside a long soft-iron cylinder placed in a uniform magnetic field perpendicular to the cylinder's axis. Anna was not a novice; she had already...
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Views 2921
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Posted Aug29-09 at 06:02 AM by kuruman (Physics and I)
Updated Aug29-09 at 04:39 PM by cristo
Breaking the vicious circle.
If the goal is to enable the student to do physics, then (by golly) the student should do physics! Doing physics is a lot like learning how to drive a car, an analogy that is universally understood. This is what I say to recruit the students' cooperation. "As a child, you have watched others get behind the wheel and drive a car. You may know all the rules of the road and the meaning of traffic signs, but if I put you behind the wheel for the first...
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Views 2896
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Posted Aug25-09 at 08:02 AM by kuruman (Physics and I)
Why the fear?
Students who take physics because of some requirement or other are mostly afraid of it. I developed this working hypothesis after numerous help sessions with students, much like we do here at PF, but face to face. So when I walked in the lecture hall, first class of the semester, first-half of algebra-based intro physics, I asked "How many of you are afraid of this course?". The response was a forest of hands, many more than I expected. So why the fear?...
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Views 5021
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