Letters to the Editor: 1.What Should We Expect Students to Learn? 2.Teaching Special Relativity

• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 47, Nº. 8, 2009, pág. 484
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • 1.A rejoinder to Sobel's comment on ¿Are most people too dumb for physics?¿ We read Michael Sobel's response with much interest and appreciate his enthusiasm and commitment to physics education. Yet, we continue to find that our goals and methods differ markedly. Foremost, because we do not agree that physics is a ¿different category¿ of hard which is accessible to a select few (i.e., ¿a certain sort of very bright student¿), we cannot agree that ordinary, nonscience students must be taught a different kind of physics. We object to the idea of two ¿types¿ of physics¿one for the layperson and one for the specialist. Physics must have relevance for everyone.

    2.I was not one of those many AAPT members to whom Lawrence Ruby refers, that in 2007 received Elisha Huggins' booklet containing the first chapter of a physics textbook espousing the new educational philosophy of teaching special relativity first in elementary physics.