Historical Method in Teaching Physics

Andy Resnick

Who is to say we don't? My students enjoy bringing in news blurbs about the recent neutrino 'measurement', majorana quasiparticles, extreme hydrophobic materials, etc. Last year we discussed the Fukushima reactor, fluid antennas, negative refractive index materials, etc.. And we discuss them as much as possible.

That said, The State of Ohio has an explicit content list that I must follow for general-education courses (I'm in a state university)- this is more so that students can easily transfer from one place to another as opposed to say, state-mandated indoctrination.

Astronuc

micromass made a pertinent comment regarding mathematics - that math (the study of or knowledge of) is cumulative. Learning is a cumuluative process.

We start learning science in elementary school, while learning the basics of language/communication and mathematics. Over time, we also learn about nature or our environment, which becomes a study of science.

I didn't study 'Physics' until my senior year of high school, although I did take an introductory course in Physics during a short (6 weeks) summer program between 9 and 10th grade. I would have preferred to have had more rigourous exposure to physics in the earlier grades, along with a coordinated program in mathematics.

I was always puzzled about the disconnect between the math and science programs. (Actually, in my high school, the physics classes were at one end of the building and math and chemistry were at the other end. It never made sense to me that we'd learn calculus during the senior year, when we should have been exposed in earlier grades, especially given that derivatives (and differential equations) and integrals, and linear algebra, are basic math in science.

I would have also preferred more exposure to observational astronomy before I got to university.

Woopydalan

This reminds me of when Gaussian surfaces were introduced, my teacher dived straight into it without giving any motivation for it, and I left being thoroughly confused. It turned out that these things aren't even real, and how was I supposed to know that?

I am starting now to have tendencies to stay after class to have the professor explain the motivation for all the crap he writes on the board instead of doing some hand waving and long strings of algebra to get somewhere that I dont know where its going. Maybe the teachers would run out of breath explaining it and it saves them the breath/time just do hand wave