At College, Davidson had a two or three course science requirement, but there were still enough intro classes for non-science people to get grounded in higher level disciplines while not trashing their GPA. We called these things like "Baby Bio" or "Kiddie Chem." For a single year we had a Physics professor visiting from Oregon who had had a heart attack and was told, for stress reasons, to "take a year off and go teach at a small college somewhere rural." Little did he know that Davidson's academic life is more stressful than most combat situations. Not that it mattered to him--his attitude was often: "What are they going to do? Fire me?"
I loved this guy. He wanted to make sure that college-educated people weren't foolish enough to fall for crap like the Bermuda Triangle, Psychics, and the like. He spent six weeks on/debunking what he called the "Pseudo Sciences." After that he covered all the physical science basics (I took this class, however, after I had taken two higher level physics courses and just wanted to be done with my science requirements after I decided not to pursue an engineering degree.)Again, I loved this guy. He wanted to make sure that everyone understood physics, and that you didn't have to be a math or science person necessarily to grasp the concepts.
His Physics exams were essay.
And you only had to answer say, 10 of the 12. And there was always one math-related question for those so inclined, but clearly it was optional.
Examples of his teaching:
First day of class, explaining the scientific process: You start with a question, then start making observations, form an hypothesis, and make more observations to test the theory. Question: What colors are swans? How do you find out what color swans are? What do you do? (Anyone? Seriously? No one? Okay, it's Tuesday, rhetorical question.) You look at swans.
Swan #1 = white.
Swan #2 = white.
Swan #3 = white.
Swan #4 = white.
Swan #5 = white.
Swan #6 = white.
Swan #7 = white...
Swan # 14 = white.
The class was thinking, "Uh, yeah, we get it. Move on already..."
Then he started pacing across the stage.
"Swan number 15...." paused and looks at the class, "white." Sighs. "Swan number 16... white." So we think swans are white. But you can't say that all swans are white, because you haven't seen all swans. So when can you stop taking data? When can you stop looking at swans?"
"When you run out of federal money."
This is science people can use.
After a couple of classes on gravity, forces, trajectories and the like, he started the next day with this: "Okay, we're resuming our lessons on trajectories today, but I have been criticised for always using a baseball or other ball in my examples on the board. Some think this is sexist and male-centric. True, Physics has always been a male-dominated field and so it tends to use sports items in place of spheres in its examples..."
So he drew a diagram on the board, the forces at play, various angles, and a dotted trajectory of some box with a big circle in the middle and little circles at the top. The class is nonplussed.
"A Lady Kenmore washing machine is traveling at a 30 angle with an initial velocity of thirty meters per second..."
Sexist? Perhaps. Funny? Certainly.
The student body amiably referred to this class (something like "Introductory Physical Concepts") as "Physics for Poets." I decided to stick with the other alliterations and metaphors and to Kiddie Chem and Baby Bio I added "Fetal Physics." I will say he gave the best explanation of the theory of relativity I've ever heard.
All things considered, I think even his lessons on rotational inertia, torque, and forces would have been spiced up or made more relevant (but no less sexist) by this:
From the Popular Science Blog: The Physical Explanation of the Flight of the Pole Dancer.
No comments:
Post a Comment