Re: What keeps electrons spinning around their nucleus?

From: Gregory L. Hansen (glhansen_at_steel.ucs.indiana.edu)
Date: 03/30/05 

Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 02:32:39 +0000 (UTC)

In article <Ndl2e.17030$C7.11444@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
Bill Hobba <bhobba@rubbish.net.au> wrote:
>
>"PD" <pdraper@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:1112120245.503240.33900@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

>> IMHO, the number-one problem students have in physics is making a
>> connection between physics and reality. You can appeal to them about
>> what they've all seen about the flight of a baseball, and then you ask
>> them to draw the trajectory of a fly ball in a physics problem and you
>> get straight lines, you get trajectories with corners, you get crazy
>> stuff. And I've *asked* them, "You've been to baseball games, right?
>> Does this look like what you see?" And they'll look at me blankly and
>> say, "But this doesn't have to look real. It's physics."

That's a heck of an observation.

>>
>> The number-two problem is ill-formed and overlapping concepts, like
>> distinguishing displacement, acceleration, and velocity in the
>> catch-all "to go", or the distinction between force, momentum, kinetic
>> energy, and power. Teaching students to be careful and precise in their
>> definitions is asking a lot of them.
>>
>> The number-three problem is pre-existing misconceptions, like thinking
>> that a bullet falls to the ground because it is slowing in flight.
>>
>> None of these would be addressed by pulling out a Power Tool, making a
>> Tim-Allen guttural grunt, and saying, "Now THIS is REAL physics!" IMHO,
>> we do our students a service by teaching them to
>> * check against their intuition
>> * recast their intuitive ideas with carefully defined terms
>> * recognize places where the edges of their intuition are a little
>> fuzzy
>> * be rigorous in making explicit predictions they can check with
>> observation, and thereby incorporate those observations into an
>> expanded intuition.
>> To me, this is teaching them to think like a physicist.
>
>PD you have experience in teaching students physics - I do not (limited to
>teaching some math). So I must say your observations hold much greater
>weight than mine. But perhaps as I suggested in another post there may be
>some value in tailoring material to the requirements of each student? After
>all when a student does have questions like I did and they get no
>satisfactory answer are we not doing a disservice to that student? Of
>course the problem is how can we accommodate these students with limited
>teaching resources. Perhaps we need more teachers like Jaime Escalante
>http://www.govtech.net/magazine/visions/feb98vision/escalante.php
>He does not believe in separating students out - he believes in challenging
>them. But I am biased - along with Feynman he is one of my heroes.

They might be directed to sci.physics if they have the psychological
fortitude to face accusations of crackpot and troll, and web pictures of
people with their heads up their butts. 

-- 
"In any case, don't stress too much--cortisol inhibits muscular
hypertrophy. " -- Eric Dodd
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