What is Digg?190 Comments
- laplacian, on 10/11/2007, -5/+152Wow, I thought this was a joke at first. Looks like someone's giving the US a run for its money on the worst education govt can buy.
- alky, on 10/11/2007, -2/+122I thought the article was going to be about dumbing down physics, but the reality is apparently a thousand times worse.
- Niteowl, on 10/11/2007, -2/+86Excellent article. It's a pity that UK school system is trying to apply Liberal Arts to the rigors of physics.
- OneLess, on 10/11/2007, -1/+80Most of those questions have very little to do with physics at all, much less comprehensively testing it.
- revelation476, on 10/11/2007, -1/+79If they've taken the math out of physics, is it safe to assume they've also taken the math out of...err... math?
- rasman1978, on 10/11/2007, -1/+69Good luck!
- HenvY, on 10/11/2007, -3/+54I did the physics GCSE with this exam board before the specification came in, and it was bloody hard. It was all formulae and calculations, but it was a lot more challenging and interesting that the ***** he says is in it now.
- wonderchemist, on 10/11/2007, -11/+58Warning this article contains information about the teaching of physics. The teaching of physics is based on a collection theories, not a facts, regarding how people learn about the nature and properties of matter and energy.. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
- BIllyBobFett, on 10/11/2007, -0/+45There are far too many public officials who have no scientific training, and yet are making decisions about science. I think America and the UK need a more rigorous science education for everyone in high school. Physics in college was the most important factor in helping me develop a scientific way of looking at the world. With physics, you see a world of definite, concrete objects that obey predictable laws, are described by definite, objective numbers, and can be studied. This replaces, in a young person's mind, a world of hazy concepts that are heard and debated in the absence of definite, concrete reality. Turning physics into a debate class is absolutely the worst thing you can do to it.
- tomz17, on 10/11/2007, -2/+42@bobmagoo
Don't underestimate your teacher, or the subject because he rounds... Physics is NOT about the number crunching. Your calculator and engineers care whether it's 9.8 or 10, the fundamental physics does not! Hell, a good chunk of upper level physics consists of clever ways to truncate power series expansions.
One thing I've learned is that physicists are able to estimate extremely well. In fact, one of the hardest graduate physics classes I took had exams where pi = 3, pi^2 = 10, etc. etc. - ShadedNine, on 10/11/2007, -1/+32I hope this message gets somewhere that it can count.
I hate seeing education getting watered down to the lowest common denominator. Why can't the system offer a course that combines social studies and pseudo-science as a separate option, allowing those who don't intend to pursue any sort of higher education to take this instead, and leave physics for those who actually intend to continue on in the sciences?
Furthermore, I've long held that schools need to start teaching the scientific process in of itself as a course. Something that will give all the students that take this physics curriculum the understanding of WHY this course is basically useless in an educated world. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -6/+33This article is more fun to read if you imagine a British accent as you read.
- bobmagoo, on 10/11/2007, -9/+34I'm in an American college physics class now and I see signs of this. Granted my course is a basic into to Physics, but it kills me when he rounds 9.8 m/s^2 up to 10 because "it doesn't really matter, close enough",(its not like science is about being specific) or when he tiptoes around the mathematical aspect of the physics so as not to scare the people in the room who don't know how to do algebra that an autistic 8th grader could do. I've taken up through calc III and it sucks cause I thought that i might get to use some of that previously considered worthless knowledge, but alas i was wrong.
< /rant > - LordofShadows, on 10/11/2007, -2/+25Calculate how the average intensity of the given poynting vectors makes you feel.
- zeptobyte, on 10/11/2007, -1/+23They tried!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standards-based_mathematics - LogicBomB, on 10/11/2007, -1/+22Wow, this is very insulting.
I can't do physics as I find it terribly hard. I do however find it terribly interesting. However, it sounds like I could graduate in the top 1% with questions like these since I can be a debating/english wizard... - badcop666, on 10/11/2007, -4/+25What you've spotted is symptomatic of a critical trend across society - from philosophy to science, politics, economics, even a quick chat on the corner.
Dumbing down, moving language from the precise and analytical to the vague and general. And you're absolutely correct - this leads away from understanding, certainty, progress towards the dark side - may as well be stoned - I'm certainly not going to understand the world enough to try changing it.
This is definitely the case in the public sphere - muddying the thinking and outlook of the people who have most to gain from clarity and reason.
While in the private sphere science and technology are applied exponentially - manufacturing, materials, communication, medical science, pharmacology etc etc. You can bet that Halliburton is very busy applying strict scientific methods to it's own particular form of scientific progress - bombs for profit. It doesn't take much intelligence to understand that one of the biggest most powerful companies in the world has little to do with human progress - quite the opposite.
So why this strange double standard or mismatch between science for profit and science for the public? What happened to the heights of the renaissance? and the world Expo of 1900? ( bearing in mind that Britain, France, Germany, Japan, US have just lead us through a century and a half of bloodthirsty barbarism, war and colonialism and are now bombing and starving the third world into the stone age - maybe it isn't surprising that these people find it difficult to comfortably wear the mantle of progress - increasingly they are nothing more than war mongers - I personally refuse to accept these patterns of thinking).
Look at economics for example. "The key thing to understand about the economy is" ...(at which point I start listening - ooh! ooh here it comes!) .." { vague, waffly, murky, foggy statements }"....oh dear, the usual dissapointment (must be a nobel laureate talking about how people "feel" in the economy - nice and safe).
So how do you debate that? You can't.
Hence, the economy can carry on as it is, while any debate is bogged in this indistinct, vague, unscientific language and thinking.
Across the board this "battle of paradigms" - if it is actually this explicit - has been lost by US and won by THEM. Who is the US and THEM. Well, who benefits if we can't have a rational discussion about the economy? About politics? about human freedom?
Our core intellectual tools are science and language. This is how bad things are. We've been pushed back so far to the point where we're debating and discussing the way we see and describe our exploitation and atomization. We can't even get NEAR fighting these processes until we can all see it for what is - as near as possible for common ground.
Until then, somone who believes in homeopathy, acupuncture and aromatherapy doesn't give a hoot about the laws of physics or scientific evidence. They're probably comfortably middle class and not really that interested in the scientific understanding of the economy that oppresses most other people - they're not affected.
I note that you don't oppose, in this instance, Global Warming agendas. This makes me smile - I'm not clear on whether you're being careful or polite or whether you actually believe it to some extent.
It strikes me though, that if you're are talking about the effects of social and political currents on the physics syllabus, then, logically, you must also consider the likelihood that the Global Warming agenda is also symptomatic - of a generally downbeat, possibly depressed outlook, where doom and stagnation are the only possible outcomes. There may or may not be "good" (reliable) evidence of "climate change" - but how is it interpretted, what could it mean, and why NOW?
This is important. I hope I've helped. Good luck. We need it. - diggduggjoe, on 10/11/2007, -2/+23I failed to finish college for I choose Physics for it was hard. I loved the hard facts of it. I figured politics, religion and history are open to interpretation. For Physics, I would need the help for I was not learning to fudge, but to reason. I struggled with the Mathematics and did okay, but when other issues in my life came up I had to drop out. You need to give a lot of attention to Physics. It is not English Lit where you can tell how a story feels. It is not Political Science where opposing views can be argued. It is pure, unadulterated science. I am still glad I took that path and if, I had the time and money now I would finish my degree.
The crap they are calling physics in Britian makes me want to cry. I guess it WAS pure, unadulterated science. - sputty01, on 10/11/2007, -1/+20ive got aslevel with OCR tomorrow, thankfully with OCR most of the questions are based around the subject still. AQA (which is being reffered to in the article) are a total joke when it comes to exam papers.
e.g.
This was a question from last years AQA computing AS paper.
"Name and describe in detail the features of the following GUI element: Icon"
Being computing students we all came up with nice intellegent answers about executing commands and the lark... but didnt get the mark.. what AQA wanted was "Something which can be clicked". Its total guess work what they want from you sometimes. - REM333, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1910m/s^2 Learn your physics.
- xBDVx, on 10/11/2007, -1/+19I feel really bad for any student that is really interested in physics and wants to take the subject in college. Once in college, that person will be lacking the skills to do any upper level courses.
I really don't understand why the government would want to dumb down their science courses when we're supposed to be churning out QUALITY scientists from our schools. - Slavik81, on 10/11/2007, -0/+16Had you used 9.81m/s/s, would you have still considered it 'dumbing down of science'? The question really just comes down to what's an acceptable level of error. It'd be impossible to use the precise value for the acceleration of gravity (partly because it's only an estimation tool). They use 10m/s/s because you can still show that you understand physics without tangling yourself in long decimal numbers. Essentially, you've described an attempt to test understanding of concept rather than the ability to deal with long strings of decimals. What's described in the article is something completely different from that.
- jabab, on 10/11/2007, -0/+16I'm an A-level Physics student. I remember the GCSE Physics containing little more than Speed=Distance/Time in terms of maths. The problem is, GCSE students can barely rearrange the most simple equation like S=D/T without a triangle to help them. At A-level, there are slightly more complex equations but they can still barely rearrange an equation at the start of the course. You only understand where these equations came from if you are at the end of the A-level Maths course (only then do you learn differential equations). The standard of Maths must improve to make Physics more like ... Physics in the UK.
- dacheetah, on 10/11/2007, -0/+16If you couldn't think of using m/s² or m/s^2 you could have used (m/s)/s (metres per second per second).
I always prefered it as msˉ². - unclejesse0, on 10/11/2007, -0/+15I couldn't agree with you more. I've been learning some very basic physics, things like projectile motion and inclined motion, in my 11th grade class. It has already had an effect on the way I view things in the world. You just think about everything that you see in such a different way when you have that sort of knowledge. This article is really sad in that they aren't teaching real science. I really hope this can be changed.
- Salgat, on 10/11/2007, -1/+16Physics without Math is like Politicians without Evidence. A load of hot gas.
- liquidindian, on 10/11/2007, -1/+16Some excellent points. At school just over ten years ago, I note the same trend in retrospect - Scottish rather than English qualifications, but similar. I think it's an attempt to make science more interesting, but it's being done the wrong way. Just as interesting, and popular, if you look at the books that sell, is the history of science and explanations for laymen. To take an example, the way that Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the Earth is a lesson in scientific investigation, in indirect measurement, and fascinating in its own right.
I hope I have his name right. - vaconex, on 10/11/2007, -2/+16You can thank the lobbyists and lawyers.
/kill em all. - cjhandley, on 10/11/2007, -6/+20"Suggest why he [a dark skinned person] can sunbathe with less risk of getting skin cancer than a fair skinned person."
Racism. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+16i wantud to reed ur comment but ther wuz 2 meny wordz lol
- Loto, on 10/11/2007, -1/+14@bobmagoo
I'm a physicist, and I round 9.8 to 10. Why? It's just number-crunching, and the majority of the time I am only interested in an answer that has the correct order of magnitude. I don't use a calculator anymore, I either simplify equations to the point where I can solve it in my head, or I use computation package like Mathematica. Like I said, an order of magnitude calculation is easier, and usually provides a clear enough result for my purposes. - Albionshores, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12Or maybe he's desperate to get this voiced.
More power to him. - swaggadocio, on 08/20/2008, -9/+20Well let me tell you. I'm in the UK and I have got Physics exams tomo: Mechanics, Radioactivity, Electricity, Thermal and Astrophysics. No debating involved, just pure physics.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+14The last thing the British Government wants is educated youth - keep them stupid and feed them MTV and Big Brother to keep them docile.
An educated populace would have the sense to be able to question the actions and methods of government, and would have had that charlatan Bliar in prison within months of his coming to office! - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+14"If they've taken the math out of physics, is it safe to assume they've also taken the math out of...err... math?"
Golly, all they're doing is making math faith-based. What's so wrong with that? I have faith that pi = about 3.
And dinosaurs and cavemen roamed the Earth back when Pythagoras invented the Pythagorean Theorem, which i remind readers is only a theory, and not really proven. And I'm sure that Intelligent Design is why Fermat's Last Theorem has never been proven. If God wanted it to be known, he would have made the margin of Fermat's book large enough to write on.
And don't forget how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It does not depend on the surface area of the pinhead. (When I say pinhead, I do not mean graduates of Bob Jones University.)
It's really important to introduce social factors in math. For instance, if Bobby has three apples and Jane has one apple, why is it unfair to feminists? And remember the Commandments of Arithmetic: Thou shalt not divide by zero, Thou shalt honor infinity, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's logarithms, and Only God can solve this damned partial differential equation, I sure can't. - andrewcool, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10My State Test for Science....had alot of political questions. Some of which where also ethical too.
- Eska, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9I do not have any qualms with using 10 instead of 9.81. The number itself is not important, what it stands for is. Students should understand what the acceleration due to gravity is and be able to calculate it given the necessary constants. I got a 5 in AP physics in high school, then I went to college and physics and science classes were complete jokes. For example instead of learning formulas for lenses and mirrors everyone was told to get out a ruler and draw scaled down models of all of our problems. Their reasoning is that some people may not be able to solve 1/Do+1/Di=1/F. My thought is that if you can not solve that equation, then you should not be in college, even if you are an art or english major. I decided to transfer colleges after that experience. I had a major problem with that.
- robbiedo, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10Isn't math the language of physics. I didn't read all the article. Are the kids too stupid to learn the Calculus. Newton rolls in his tomb (an amazing tomb).
- styryx, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8@ manixrock:
Dude, that's nice, but it proves square numbers have two roots. You'd get laughed at by any real mathematician for that kind of logical fallacy. - Albionshores, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Why is government telling an education board what to teach in physics class?
Let physics doctorates advise the education bord and let physics graduates, trained in teaching, teach the class. Return credible authority to those that the parents have entrusted to teach their kids. - 0260, on 10/11/2007, -5/+13"The person with the better evidence, not the better rhetoric or talking points, wins." Someone tell Al Gore.
- Kazbaeden, on 10/11/2007, -4/+12@bobmagoo
Just don't take relativity then; Your brain will explode when you're told to set c=1! - interiot, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8WTF? This is ostensibly a math textbook: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest_algebra#Sample_problems
* What other kinds of pollution besides air pollution might threaten our planet? [page 163]
* Each year the Oilfield Chili Appreciation Society holds a chili cook-off. . . . 1. The chili cook-off raises money for charity. Describe some ways the organizers could raise money in the cook- off. 2. What is the hottest kind of pepper that you have eaten? People who have tasted them agree that cayenne peppers are hotter than pimento peppers. How would you set up a hotness scale for peppers? . . . . [page 217]
* What role should zoos play in today's society? . . . . [page 233]
* [A] zoo sponsors a creative writing contest for high school students. The topic for the essay this year is "Why should we save an endangered species?" . . . . What would you use as criteria for judging the essay? [page 253] - TheMrFlibble, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Yeah back in the day.
When I did my physics GCSE for fun we built a rail-gun.
it had to hit a target 10 meters away.
we did the math, we built it, we set the power supply to the wrong voltage, we broke a window.
Physics was fun and challenging.
If you tried to do that sort of thing now there would be a massive outcry health and safety rules alone stop them from doing any fun experiments now as it is, never mind dumbing down the syllabus.
- somnambulator, on 10/11/2007, -15/+22This and the spread of creationist schools in Britain is the next step in the Blair/Bush relationship.
Blair seems to be bringing Britain into parallel with the US by setting up an uneducated, fundamentalist, creationist, christian mass of British rednecks.
I find it deeply disturbing that first they set-up so many creationist schools in Britain, then try dumbing down the rest of the future population.
And the scary point in the article that really jumped out at me was this one:
"Pupils are taught to poke holes in scientific experiments, to constantly find what is wrong. However, never are the pupils given ways to determine when an experiment is reliable, to know when an experiment yields information about the world that we can trust."
That is straight from the 'creationism 101' handbook.
To all parents in the UK:
Teach your own kids to think. Teach them the hard stuff. Because if you don't your government will turn them into zombies. - Kazbaeden, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8"It's about 9.8m/s^2, not 10. Holy crap."
Spoken like a true... not physicist.
There's an old joke about a biologist, a chemist, and a physicist who were assigned to solve a problem. The chemist and biologist can't solve it because they say there isn't enough information for them to draw a conclusion. The physicist, on the other hand, solves it, but explains that he approximated the subject as a sphere. So true.
I actually took a course where we solved something called fermi problems, where we were given a problem like "How many piano tuners are in Chicago?" and "A mouse is running on a wheel on a ship. How long will it take the ship to sink?" and be expected to find numeric order of magnitude answers with no other additional information. Very interesting. - Loto, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7I just said this above, but I'll say it again. It is very common to do order of magnitude calculations (assuming the acceleration due to Earth's gravity is 10, Pi is 3, or the speed of light is 1) in physics, to get an approximate answer. Why? Because that's all you really need to judge what is happening. Yes, in experimental circumstances or for papers things are calculated out in gory detail, but for discussion or simple problem solving I just want to see how the field varies with the radius, an answer that goes as ~1/r is just fine for that sort of thing.
Oh, and before you digg me down, I'm a physicist. :P
Don't digg the parent down, though! I thought the exact same thing when dealt with physics in middle/high school. They just don't do a great job really explaining what the subject is trying to do, and teach it as an intro to engineering course rather than a real physics course. - raithetarkon, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8"Not to mention many entry-level college physics are actually LAWS (ie facts)"
Laws in physics aren't facts. They are simply extremely well tested theories. - mstoneburner, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7You pretty much miss the point entirely.
- mustafya, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5You have politicians designing every single bit of this. That is why the tests are so absurd. Here in the US the most depressing thing is the lowering of standards at the high school and university levels so that everyone has a near 100% chance of passing. One of my majors (Finance) I regularly speak to other finance majors including ones from ivy league business schools that can't even explain such simple things as duration or present/future value.
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