On behalf of kids

climbhi

Yeah but you have to remember, Magin, that most of modern physics just can't be visualized by us becuase it goes against everything we experience in daily life, I mean seriously "particle-like-waves" that's not visualizable, nor is much of modern physics, understandable yes, but it's not like in newtonian mechanics where you can visualize a baseball trajectory or something.

And as far as math in General Relativity goes, you must have only seen a very introductory approach to it, becuase the full treatment of it, from what I understand, is more mathematically sophisticated then most college undergraduates are capable of understanding (I'm not sure, well, becuase I am still an undergrad).

It's neat that you like physics, and you certainly shouldn't stop wondering and investigating what lies ahead, but remember don't get to wrapped up in it that you forget to study and really really master what you're learning now becuase it reall is the foundation for what's to come, and without it you'll be left to just stupid memorization tricks in your college classes instead of actually being able to understand what's happening, and trust me I see a lot of people here who have to resort to these idiot memorization tricks instead of being capable of understanding what's going on, and it doesn't look fun at all.

RuroumiKenshin

I agree with you, climbhi. I, and others should focus on understanding the concept, and not simply memorize it. well said![;)]

Brad_Ad23

Amen to that. If you have a solid physical insight into a system, the maths that describe it should flow very easily to mind, and you have no need to memorize many equations.

selfAdjoint

While modern developments in GR are indeed difficult, the basic theory as Einstein presented it, up to the Schwartzschild solution, is accessible to anyone who understands partial derivatives, functions of several real variables, and a little linear algebra. It is not beyond a college undergraduate with a math concentration at all.

Entropia

What are some of the pros and cons of home schooling children?

Or hiring a private tutor?

If I ever decide to breed or adopt... I think I would likely do either of the above.

I am a passionate empathizer with being a victim of rubbish pedagogy or... an educational system that is just blatantly incompatable with one's learning.

Mentat

This sounds like a pretty good thread topic, entropia.

climbhi

Remember now, I said most undergrads, I don't know about where you are but math majors are about the smallest group of people here at my school, and I imagine most. If it wasn't for the fact that colleges have to have all those math professors so that they can keep their engineering and pre-med programs they'd probably drop the math department all together in order to invest more in biology for all the pre-meds or something dumb like that. And physics programs aren't very much larger, which is sad, but true.

I guess I was thinking more about the topology necessary for modern GR, but still I highly doubt that most 7th graders have even been introduced to regular derivative let alone partial derivatives and the like.

Perhaps what Majin was referring to was special relativity, there are some formulas there that are pretty basic if I'm thinking right, but this does not represent the whole of relativity.