lessons

yourdadonapogostick

would it be possible to have some of the more knolegable members put togather lessons in their area(s) of expertise and then have a mod or admin sticky it? personally, i think it would not only be a good tool to help people learn, but it would set physicsforums apart from everyone else.

Danger

Physics Forums is already apart from everyone else.

yourdadonapogostick

yea, you have to pay for what is free in other forums.

Moonbear

You don't have to pay to be a member here. Contributorship is voluntary, but comes with perks to encourage it. The main mission of the site is science education and homework help, and we do that extremely well.

Providing lessons is beyond the scope of what we do here and take a lot of effort to prepare. Some folks have been working on some basic "FAQ" type help for the general physics homework questions we get often, and some folks have things in their journals along the lines of career advice, and last I checked, they were working through a book as a group over in the philosophy forums, but we generally expect that people coming here are receiving formal education elsewhere and are seeking something other than lectures when they come here. You can learn a lot just from reading the threads in many of the forums here if you don't have your own questions yet.

yourdadonapogostick

what you learn from reading threads is incomplete. say you read a thread on how to differentiate a function. if you didn't know that there was more to it, you would think "wow, i know differential calculus."

Tom Mattson

Internet forums are great for discussing things with other people from around the world, but they are no substitute for reading a textbook and burning the midnight oil solving problems.

yourdadonapogostick

hey tom, nice to see a familiar face!

Astronuc

PhysicsForums is complementary to the already vast resources on the internet. Most who come here already have access to high school or college courses, as well as textbooks. PF even has a section recommending textbooks in mathematics and science subjects.

I concur with Danger, PF is already apart from everyone else!

Moonbear is quite right - lessons take a lot of preparation and time. The threads on specific topics are extremely valuable. Along the lines of the journals Moonbear mentioned, I would point to marlon's and ZapperZ's journals and the thread <ZapperZ's "So You Want To Be A Physicist"> in the Academic & Career Guidance Forum.

marlon

I am willing to explain certain concepts of physics but do not expect a full lesson. Like others have already stated, that just takes too much time. we work via the FAQ principle. I would like to set up some kind of physics glossary though but again that requires lots of time to do it properly...time i do not have for the moment...

regards
marlon

ZapperZ

If you are using an internet open forum as your primary source of information in forming your knowledge, I would be really worried if I were you.

All of the good work being done on here are still done voluntarily, and despite the best of intentions, no one is going over everything meticulously to guarantee the correctness of what you read. As good as PF is (and it is at the top of the heap as far as I'm concerned), one should NEVER use it as a primary source of established, valid info, especially on physics.

Zz.

arildno

Here's your first lesson (in English):

Moonbear

Wasn't there a glossary created around here somewhere? Were there too few contributions to it and it got tossed, or is the link to it hiding somewhere?

I don't think anyone expects to have learned all of differential calculus from reading a thread on one question about it. It's meant to supplement your knowledge from a proper course on the subject. No sticky post is going to be a complete course on the subject either. Why would we prepare lessons in sticky threads when there are plenty of textbooks available that do that job well already? How could we expect to cover the material in a 1000+ page text in a single sticky post in any way that would be better than referring directly to the textbook? Once you're beyond the stage where textbooks are useful, you will know how to learn on your own and will rely more on journal articles to continually update your knowledge, and while discussion of the content of those articles is great as a thread topic, even courses at the graduate level that use those articles as a foundation for the lessons don't include much lecture and instead focus much more on group discussion as well.

robphy

http://physicsforums.com/glossaire.php

dextercioby

@OP:Trust me,i learnt a lot by reading threads on PF.So be happy with what we can offer now.We can't provide more.

Daniel.

Lisa!

we already have some Classes in GD:
TheTeacher , The Name Of the Class
Danger , How to be hulmorist
Astronuc , How to be nice and polite
wolram , How to see the world beautiful and be hopeful to future


But unfortunately students don't take them serious or perhaps they have another problem!


I think you ought to ask them to introduce some useful books in every area you like and then ask them to help you if you get into any question or problem!
Most of time,just checking different threads helps alot.when people are explaining sth, you can easily learn lots of things about the subject.

Moonbear

Do you just have it bookmarked, or am I sitting here staring at some blatantly obvious link to the glossary and not seeing it? With 175 entries, it's reasonably sized to make more prominent. Perhaps it should show up in either Quick Links or in the drop-down (up?) navigation menu down at the bottom of the page? Unless it's in there and I didn't see it.

robphy

I remembered the announcment of a "glossary".
So, I did a search for it.

(At the announcement, I thought about a few words but never submitted it. Maybe this discussion will revive it.)