What problems should be chosen for a physics course?

[spaghetti3451]

Hi,

I want to ask this question.

Why do lecturers select the problems they select in the problem sets? I don't understand why those problems have to be selected and not any others.

 

[symbolipoint]

Your question may be very different than your post's title. The exercise questions which a professor (or lecturer) might ask could depend on what he decides to ask according to his opinion while the syllabus might be the same for all sections of the course at the school.

Specifically about your question, a book's section could have several exercises. The lecturer may want to solve the problems himself and have a detailed solution key of his own, according to his own work. This means that he will know the exercises and their solutions better than those he did not recently solve. Also, he may have picked some representative exercises to help with practice for the topics being taught. This still should not restrict the student from doing more exercises than are assigned.

 

[spaghetti3451]

Your question may be very different than your post's title.

I am sorry for putting a misleading title on the thread.

The exercise questions which a professor (or lecturer) might ask could depend on what he decides to ask according to his opinion

Why are the problems set according to the opinion of the lecturer? I believe that the goal of a university degree is to help you understand the physical theories and solve routine problems (those which turn out to be needed in professional work in the academia). Am I right on this? If I'm right and the professor is setting questions according to his opinion, then he could set problems on anything, even problems which have practically no use in later life. My problem is with the word "opinion". Opinion vary, but the problems needed for use in later life are surely unchanging.

while the syllabus might be the same for all sections of the course at the school.

I don't understand this.

Also, he may have picked some representative exercises to help with practice for the topics being taught.

Is this not the same as the previous reason?

 

[Vanadium 50]

but the problems needed for use in later life are surely unchanging.

What on Earth would make you think that?

I spend most of my day working on topics that didn't even exist when I was in school.

 

[Choppy]

The question here reminds me of the kids in class who ask, "When are we ever going to use this?" It is a little more frequent in high school and below, rather than at the university level and above.

If you look at most first year university courses - specifically in physics (but it applies to math, engineering, and chemistry as well) - you'll likely find that the problems don't actually vary that much from school to school. Some professors will try to get a little more creative and some will just assign problems from the chapters in the text, but because the key concepts are similar, so are the problems. In fact so are the textbooks.

In university, you have to keep in mind that you're learning an academic discipline. Job training, or direct applications specific to given professions - is something that comes at the community college level. When you come out of school with a degree in physics there are certain problems that you would be expected to be able to solve, at least if you're going on to graduate school, so if you look at the programs across a range of schools, they don't really vary that much.

What you're paying the big bucks for at the university level, is to be taught the discipline from someone who is at the leading edge of it. This person's opinion is based on his or her experience in getting to that leading edge and should be quite valuable. But even then, when assigning problems, the decision is largely based on needing the students to have covered specific topics by the end of the term.