Re: Curing Einstein's Disease (is Copyrighted)

On Feb 1, 10:29 am, PD <TheDraperFam...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jan 31, 11:09 pm, NoEinstein <noeinst...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There is a ritual that physics professors go through: It's called
"deriving equations". They string lines of this and that together;
and faster than 'smart' students can write down, let alone question.

Not in my classes. The smart students just followed what I was doing
by watching and questioning now and again, and then they went back to
their dorm rooms or apartments and did it again for themselves. It was
the not so smart students that were trying to write everything down so
that they wouldn't have to work it out for themselves, and were so
busy writing that they didn't have time to think of any questions, let
alone asking them.

Wow. Could "NoEinstein" be any clearer in expressing
where his resentment comes from. He couldn't follow
a derivation, so he thinks it's black magic and pointless,
and furthermore projects his failings onto the rest
of the world, that NOBODY could follow a derivation.

The entire point of seeing derivations in a physics
class/text, like proofs in a math class/text, is so that
you don't just accept results on faith. You see where
they came from, what the starting point was and the
process to get to the result. I would hope that at
least the B students follow it and are able to describe
and reproduce it.

With one exception (organic chemistry), I don't remember
any class I ever took where I was writing things down
without time to think about them, or was expected
to. Indeed, I learned pretty quickly that I could never
learn a subject unless my notes were paraphrases
rather than verbatim copies of what the professor was
saying.

Did NoEinstein never take a single course where
students were pointing out errors (a dropped factor
of 2, a mistaken change of sign) that the professor
had made in a derivation? I would think that's the
norm.

I had one admittedly quirky (but nevertheless, or perhaps
because of it my favorite) professor who actually
insisted students not write anything down. He
expected you to follow what he was doing and
be able to reproduce it without the note-taking.
And if you asked him a question in the hall
afterward, he'd slap the paper out of your hand
if you tried to ask it by scribbling equations.

- Randy
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: A Challenge for the Experts
    ... > and challenge the brightest students. ... > If this derivation is faulty at any point, ... Eugene, the misstep is that you are a good mathematician, but you ... really honestly have no feeling for physics whatsoever. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: A Challenge for the Experts
    ... > and challenge the brightest students. ... > If this derivation is faulty at any point, ... Eugene, the misstep is that you are a good mathematician, but you ... really honestly have no feeling for physics whatsoever. ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: Curing Einsteins Disease (is Copyrighted)
    ... and faster than 'smart' students can write down, let alone question. ... that NOBODY could follow a derivation. ... Did you pass English, Randy? ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: A Challenge for the Experts
    ... > the Lorentz transformation aimed at beginning students ... > and challenge the brightest students. ... > If this derivation is faulty at any point, ... implies in general a much richer spacetime than SR in which Lorentz ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: A Challenge for the Experts
    ... > the Lorentz transformation aimed at beginning students ... > and challenge the brightest students. ... > If this derivation is faulty at any point, ... implies in general a much richer spacetime than SR in which Lorentz ...
    (sci.physics)