- #36
CosmicKitten
- 132
- 0
But if the students did well in a basic physics class in high school, then they already got all of that, didn't they?
The point of making you take it again in the first year of college I thought was to show you how it's based in calculus? But using an integral, force differential x to find the work done is so simple, it reduces to an easy equation, F*x unless the force is a function of displacement. I spotted momentum as the derivative of kinetic energy with respect to velocity very easily. But really, I think someone who had not taken calculus but had good grounding in algebra and trigonometry would easily pass it. Is that a problem for most freshmen, remembering their algebra and trigonometry?
If I have a problem with something, it's usually because of an equation I don't know. Being too hardheaded to listen to how others approach the problem, I just try to figure out my own overcomplicated way. Is this how people are supposed to learn it? By having to figure out the equations all on their own? When it would be easier to just read a lengthy paper on how the equations were originally derived, a paper so lengthy you will never forget the equation that it is about? Should all children thus be kept away from advanced educational materials in case they spoil themselves for the mental exercise of knowledge deficiency? Come to think of it, that may be why it's so much easier for me than for other people, because I was knowledge deprived in the home for a good while. No internet, no books, I wrote down equations if I was lucky enough to see them on Science Channel. I borrowed a noncalculus book on physics and read it and played with equations in it just for fun. All of a sudden give me library books and internet, what happens?
The point of making you take it again in the first year of college I thought was to show you how it's based in calculus? But using an integral, force differential x to find the work done is so simple, it reduces to an easy equation, F*x unless the force is a function of displacement. I spotted momentum as the derivative of kinetic energy with respect to velocity very easily. But really, I think someone who had not taken calculus but had good grounding in algebra and trigonometry would easily pass it. Is that a problem for most freshmen, remembering their algebra and trigonometry?
If I have a problem with something, it's usually because of an equation I don't know. Being too hardheaded to listen to how others approach the problem, I just try to figure out my own overcomplicated way. Is this how people are supposed to learn it? By having to figure out the equations all on their own? When it would be easier to just read a lengthy paper on how the equations were originally derived, a paper so lengthy you will never forget the equation that it is about? Should all children thus be kept away from advanced educational materials in case they spoil themselves for the mental exercise of knowledge deficiency? Come to think of it, that may be why it's so much easier for me than for other people, because I was knowledge deprived in the home for a good while. No internet, no books, I wrote down equations if I was lucky enough to see them on Science Channel. I borrowed a noncalculus book on physics and read it and played with equations in it just for fun. All of a sudden give me library books and internet, what happens?