Hello: I'm a retired teacher, now developing new resources

[philevans1745]

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I'm interested in developing resources for bright students who are in the last year or so of high school, and are looking to stretch themselves and tackle some science that's beyond the curriculum. These would, I hope, also be of value to students looking to bridge the gap between high school and university in a productive way.

In physics, for example, such students often turn to popular science resources. These can be fascinating and sometimes inspirational but don't do a lot for the students' intellectual development because they don't get the chance to work things out for themselves - and their "equation-free" approach can be frustrating for those who want to flex the mathematical muscles they have developed in high school. Unfortunately, university-level texts tend to be impenetrable for students at this level. So I think there's a bit of a gap here and I'm hoping to contribute a little to filling it.

 

[fresh_42]

Hello and !

This gap is huge and it wouldn't be necessary in my opinion. I think chemistry and biology do not suffer from this gap in language, subjects, and in my mind even from teaching things wrong - at least in mathematics.

Good luck!

 

[berkeman]

I'm interested in developing resources for bright students who are in the last year or so of high school, and are looking to stretch themselves and tackle some science that's beyond the curriculum.

Sounds like a good thread topic for our Educators and Teaching forum.

https://www.physicsforums.com/forums/stem-educators-and-teaching.192/

 

[phinds]

In physics, for example, such students often turn to popular science resources.

Such "resources" tend to be AWFUL in terms of actual science. Their primary objective to sell soap, not to educate.

While I agree w/ Fresh that bridging the math gap is likely to be a bridge too far, it WOULD be helpful to them if you understood enough physics yourself to discuss things with them. Absent that, you could just send them here. The ones who are interested enough will get a huge benefit from reading threads here on stuff they "know" because they heard it via pop-sci. They will discover that much of what they "know" is either misleading or just flat wrong.

I know this is true because, although I'm a bit past high school age, I came here after having read at least a dozen pop-sci science books and watched many dozens of episodes of various pop-sci TV programs.

Mostly, I had the presence of mind to keep my mouth shut and my eyes and brain open and I found that pretty much everything I "knew" was, as I said above, either badly misleading or totally wrong.

 

[russ_watters]

This is a real problem and I wish you luck! I have some thoughts but will hold them for a discussion thread.