High School Physics Course

[jyl]

My daughter is taking physics in high school. I find the methods very interesting.

I was taught physics as basically an application of math. Masses falling in gravity were simply f = ma and d = at^2/2, etc. Air resistance was another equation with area and velocity. Set up the equations and solve it. Same when we got to thermodynamics, electricity, fields, circuits, etc. It was all basically math problems. Really irritating, ugly math problems with long messy numbers and units that always came up missing.

In this high school class, they do things differently. They have an application which is sort of a virtual lab. To investigate the behavior of objects falling in air, they run virtual experiments - dropping stacks of 5, 10, 15, 25 coffee filters from 2 meters while a virtual "motion detector" measures instantaneous position, velocity, and acceleration. The application spits out graphs of the "logged data" which are realistically messy and jumpy, so that you have to run the experiments repeatedly and average out the data. Then you chart the data and make deductions about the physical laws therein revealed.

So for example we "showed" that, when dropped, the heavier stacks of filters accelerate faster than the light stacks. We thus deduced that, while the force of gravity increases with mass, the opposite force of air resistance probably does not.

This method of learning was confusing to me, but interesting.

I discussed it with a friend who is a physics Ph.D, retired from a career in semiconductor design. He said that in China, where he was educated, physics was taught as math, which was a Russian influence - they are big on theory. He felt that in the US, we teach physics as a real world subject, with students getting the experience of struggling to verify theory in squiggly patchy lab data. He said that is much better.

I have no idea if that is correct. My physics study was 30+ years ago, there was no hint of labwork, and I disliked even the messy equations so much that I bailed on my physics major after a year.

But I'm pretty impressed, overall, at this high school physics course.

[Joe Bob]

Physics is Phun....

[red-beard]

I took two courses in high school. The 1st was Honors Physics (equations, but not calculus based). The 2nd was AP, college level, calculus based physics. Both courses had labs, which required running, then write up and conclusions. Hands on is better than theory.

Ours were pretty straight forward. The coffee filter thing seems to mix too many concepts (air resistance and gravity).

[Flieger]

Well, I am in engineering which I think of as applied physics, which I guess is applied math...

We are always doing labs. There is a lecture and lab component to all the important ME classes from dynamics on up. We did labs in physics, too.

Cal Poly's motto is discedere faciendo ("learn by doing") so labs are a big part of our curriculum. So the example you gave sounds familiar. Although we always have a lecture portion that teaches us what others have found and what we should find based on equations and the theory. Then we go out and test it. Sometimes it is to see how well the correlation can be measured even with noisy signals and error, other times it is to see how hard it is to do that. But it gives you a better sense of what is really going on.

[Cajundaddy]

Both my HS and University physics courses were a combination of math equations and labs. My HS physics teacher was a riot and I had a blast. I always seemed to excel in the lab and had to work at the equations while others found the equations intuitive yet struggled in the lab. Different gifts and learning styles.

[TheMentat]

I think you are describing the difference between empirical and theoretical science. Most science classes try to teach you the tools used in either discipline, until you start getting into graduate courses... then they start to specialize (perhaps its different elsewhere, but that's how it worked for me).

[id10t]

I skipped 17 days of physics in highschool, missed covering gravity completely. Teacher handed me a desktop laser (this was late 80s) and told me to make a chronograph if I wanted an A. Did it

[Evans, Marv]

Learned more about what made the world tick from physics & chemistry than anything else. All of what I had was math and lab based.

[IROC]

It seems like the method of teaching in the OP is very good. We always had labs in HS and college physics. Real-world applications of somewhat abstract subjects like physics are a must, IMHO. Students are going to better retain rectilinear particle motion if they can launch balls at different angles and initial velocities and measure the travel than simply grinding out the calculations.

I actually had to design a test setup once to test missile kill vehicle ejector assemblies and it all basically came down to a simply physics experiment.

Phun stuff.

[vash]

i didnt even know physics was offered in high school!! i didnt run in that circle.

[sjf911]

Looks like there is a lot of criticism of science education with Oregon getting an "F". One of the main points is lack of math.



The State of State Science Standards 2012

U.S. State Science Standards Are “Mediocre to Awful” | Budding Scientist, Scientific American Blog Network

[RWebb]

buy her the Feymann physics lectures books - a great approach - tell her not to worry if she can't understand it all

[gtc]

My high school physics class used that teaching method - we basically derived the formulas ourselves for gravity, etc...
It was a complete disaster. It took forever, and we wound up covering only a fraction of the typical HS physics curriculum.
Luckily I didn't need it as a pre-req for college. I caught up easily in Phys101.
If my math classes had been taught that way, however, I could and would not have gone into engineering.

[Evans, Marv]

I loved implementing physics in a practical way. For instance when we would fire up the Van De Graaf generator in class and have fun with it. We'd fire it up, quietly line up chairs and stand on them with our hands joined together. Then the last one on the line would touch the ear lobe of some guy who was in deep concentration reading something or concentrating on something else. Fun to put static electricity to a practical use.

[wdfifteen]

the theory when I was in school was you had to have a year of calculus before you took physics. Calculus made no sense to me until I took physics, then I began to see the beauty, symmetry, and logic of the natural world. I think calculus an physics need to be taught concurrently. The connection between mathematics and the physical world needs to be demonstrated from day one.

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

the theory when I was in school was you had to have a year of calculus before you took physics. Calculus made no sense to me until I took physics, then I began to see the beauty, symmetry, and logic of the natural world. I think calculus an physics need to be taught concurrently. The connection between mathematics and the physical world needs to be demonstrated from day one.

That was the way we did it, for the calculus based/College Level, course.

[mjohnson]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

the theory when I was in school was you had to have a year of calculus before you took physics. Calculus made no sense to me until I took physics, then I began to see the beauty, symmetry, and logic of the natural world. I think calculus an physics need to be taught concurrently. The connection between mathematics and the physical world needs to be demonstrated from day one.

Absolutely! To teach newtonian physics and/or calculus separately makes both of them harder. Mechanics is the easiest way to make the concepts of calculus real...

[TheMentat]

Quote de wdfifteen

the theory when I was in school was you had to have a year of calculus before you took physics. Calculus made no sense to me until I took physics, then I began to see the beauty, symmetry, and logic of the natural world. I think calculus an physics need to be taught concurrently. The connection between mathematics and the physical world needs to be demonstrated from day one.

Absolutely! To teach newtonian physics and/or calculus separately makes both of them harder. Mechanics is the easiest way to make the concepts of calculus real...

Totally agree!

[onewhippedpuppy]

Sounds like an excellent teacher, kudos to them. Simply regurgitating formulas and solving equations are the easy way out. Really teaching the topic so that students UNDERSTAND the material is what it's all about. Without real-world application, most math and science is simply mental masturbation.

Working in aerospace, I see a staggering number of new college engineering grads that have no practical knowledge of airplanes, systems, or frankly anything they studied in college. They can do the math, but apply it to something real and everything breaks down. I had a huge advantage simply because of my past mechanic and DIY experience, many of these kids have never gotten their hands dirty. Frankly I see this as an outright failure of our colleges because they are not adequately preparing students for the real world, instead they are preparing them for more theoretical work in grad school. Unfortunately many professors have no real world experience, therefore they lack the practical experience to teach it.

[mjohnson]

Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy

... Working in aerospace, I see a staggering number of new college engineering grads that have no practical knowledge of airplanes, systems, or frankly anything they studied in college. They can do the math, but apply it to something real and everything breaks down...

We sponsor some senior engineering capstone design projects. It's always fun to go to their design reviews. They love their TIG welding and their CNC machining - "it reads out to a tenth - that's what it does, right?" We're always the wet blankets with the "how you gonna inspect/accept that?

No engineering curricula will teach in a semester or two what that experienced machinist will in a few minutes behind their closed office door. ("Boy - you're an idiot. Let me show you how to get this done...").

To the original topic - physics and math are abstract and almost meaningless until the very end. Go far enough and the universe opens up...