jasonRF said:
So I am actually 100% on-board with forcing physics students to take a dedicated course on numerical methods. A freshman course is certainly better than nothing,...
I'll try a different tack. You have apparently condensed my 'revolution' down to taking a numerical methods course early, but that's only part of it. So, let's examine this idea in context, something which has been entirely missing from this thread, and that is my fault. In the beginning I didn't think context was important. However, at the editors insistence I did include context in the published version of the paper ... the editors asked for a literature review but ... there is no literature for the basic idea of teaching numerical methods in high school ... so I included this section ...
IMPROVING PHYSICS EDUCATION
The early introduction of differential equations, but not computational calculus, into the university engineering curriculum is one of the primary features of an ongoing NSF sponsored project at Wright State University that has had great success.7
Computational calculus is one of the primary components of computational physics, and there is a growing awareness that universities have been slow to incorporate computational physics into the physics curriculum. A group of physics professors, Partnership for Including Computation in Undergraduate Physics (PICUP)8, has formed to promote the incorporation of computational methods into university undergraduate physics education. The PICUP approach is ‘top down’, in that the goal is to introduce computational methods into already existing physics courses. 9,10 One well-known textbook integrates computational methods, but not differential equations, into introductory college level physics.11
The proposed course represents a new approach that is ‘bottom up’ and introduces computers, differential equations and computational calculus into the physics curriculum at the beginning, independently of the math curriculum beyond high school algebra and geometry.
The rest of the paper is dedicated to establishing two things: #1 - it is possible to teach powerful numeric methods in high school or the first year of college, and #2 - the benefits of teaching numeric methods early are enormous.
#1 - in order to show how trivially easy computational methods are an example is worked in complete detail to the point of calculating the trajectory of Newton's falling apple by hand. The next step is to program the procedure in MATLAB, and the translation from hand calculation to MATLAB statements is essentially 1 to 1 and by rote. The details are in the paper.
And, thanks to this thread and post #108 we know that MATLAB programming is introduced in high school at the Wilberforce Academy, and I looked into this and Wilberforce uses the Trinity curriculum that is used in three Trinity Schools, and includes computers, differential equations, an computational methods , one of the schools is
Trinity Greenlawn where MATLAB is introduced in grade 11 and the 12th grade physics course description reads .
Physics B, C (2 Semesters) Students continue their study of physics using calculus in problem-solving. Some topics in mechanics are revisited using the calculus, culminating in the solution of the Kepler problem. ...
I think the paper establishes #1 beyond any reasonable doubt, and this confirms it. I'm trying to get more detailed info on Trinity program.
#2 - the central force motion examples in the paper dramatically demonstrate the enormous benefits of teaching computational methods. Newton's solution to the Kepler problem represents the beginning of modern math and science, and it is almost unsolvable analytically, you have to use the computer. And yet, I have not found one traditional university physics text, upper or lower division, that gives a solution.
So, what happens in a typical high school physics class is that the physics of central force motion is easily presented, the model for central force motion is derived by one division statement. And the class has arrived at an almost unsolvable problem, see the analytic infinite series solution here
wiki Freefall.
And white Kepler's problem is almost unsolvable analytically, the three-body problem, e.g. a rocket trajectory from the Earth to the moon, is completely intractable analytically.
What is true for central force motion is true for every branch of classical physics, that is, after the physical laws are stated and the system model derived, the student is faced with unsolvable or nearly unsolvable differential equations.
The paper includes examples from electric circuit analysis and 2-D rigid body dynamics that illustrate how these systems are analyzed outside the classroom. My new paper includes examples for heat transfer, wave phenomena, stress and strain in materials, fluid dynamics, and electrodynamics.
A previous post, #104, gives examples from upper division texts for classical dynamics, heat transfer, vibration, and fluid dynamics, where the text defers to numerical methods because the systems they've described cannot be analyzed using traditional methods.
The bottom line is computational calculus is the only way real systems can be analyzed.
*** the wider context is that the NSF has realized for a long time that something is wrong with math education and spent millions in the 1990s trying to improve it with no results, and is now spending millions to improve STEM education with studies that are almost comical, e.g. Computational Thinking for Preschoolers'>>