Information sources and physics teaching

[Astronuc]

I am saying that, from a scientific standpoint, teaching is a very immature science, simply because it's a relatively new field, you can't do controlled experiments in it (you can't stamp out a thousand identical students and try various teaching methods on them and measure and compare the outcomes),

I think the science of teaching science is an inexact science, since each student is unique, not only in capabilities, but usually different and unknown initial and boundary conditions. Many may 'similar' backgrounds, but some may have an advantage more than others. Some may fit better with certain aspects of science, and some are more proficient at mathematics. Some can deal with an abstract concept (SR/GR/QM/. . . ) well outside of normal experience, but probably many cannot - or maybe some could if started sooner/earlier.

Each student represents a different trajectory, and some may converge, some may become more or less parallel, while others may diverge.

My wife was a teaching assistant, and she had to develop custom-tailored strategies for each student based on a unique set of weaknesses and strengths.Textbooks are useful, since they contain information from experts/practitioners and are usually peer-reviewed. When I was in high school, I used to browse textbooks at university libraries, and take notes. I would visit the university book store, browse textbooks and occasionally buy one or more, and I'd visit a technical book store and buy one or more books on various topics. I was probably in 9th or 10th grade when I bought a book on analytical geometry and another on calculus, since I know if I wanted to study physics and/or engineering, I need to learn calculus. As an undergraduate, I'd browse the graduate textbooks in order to understand what I would need to understand to get to those levels.

The benefit of teachers is their experience; they are practitioners (and some even write textbooks), and they were once students. In theory, they can help guide students, who become practitioners and teachers/mentors themselves - like the PF mentors, advisors and homework helpers.

 

[syfry]

If a single pop-science explanation can keep you confused for years, why do you think that an explanation you like happens to be correct? How do you know history is not repeating itself?

Pardon the later reply, was busy with life and wanted to wait until had enough time to properly reply.

But this one might be easy enough.

Would it be fair to say I had gained from a very complicated subject what you gained from reading the following from my explanation? Please keep in mind that my tone is light hearted and friendly (it's difficult to perceive tone in written text)

It's likely still inaccurate, but at least now I could better reason out what questions to ask to gain a more accurate understanding of gravity

And, would it be fair to say that you might've gone on to misinterpret what I said that's easier than general relativity?

Might it be fair to suppose that if people can misinterpret familiar words that then our ability to misinterpret very complicated things is only natural? (and more expected)

I personally think it's fair, but would like to know your stance as well for the sake of consideration.

To rephrase the quote: I did acknowledge my interpretation as likely incorrect, and that despite it being so, my misinterpreted understanding still enabled me to ask better questions.

Where years ago, I assumed space alone as warped, time also is warped... but if that's incorrect, then please elaborate. Also if my interpretation that matter / energy is warping time a lot more than either is warping space, then please elaborate on that too. Thanks!

 

[syfry]

Relativity says what direction is "time" and what directions are "space" is observer dependent. So it's not clear exactly what this pithy line is saying. One could say that the apparent force of gravity is in the direction of the gradient of time dilation, and that is more accurate. One could also say that the path of a falling apple in spacetime is predominantly along the time direction and so curvature in that direction is more evident than in others. That's certainly more true, but not everything is a falling apple: if one were to base an approximation on apples and apply it to light, they would be off by a factor of2: one coule argue with the same degree of (in)accuracy that gravity bends light, half in time and half in space.

Thanks for having elaborated. I should've read further first to realize you had.

I disagree about my oversimplification being on par with the rubber sheet. For if you had said the following to a person who knew only the rubber sheet:

One could also say that the path of a falling apple in spacetime is predominantly along the time direction and so curvature in that direction is more evident than in others

...that person would have no idea what you're saying. I did understand what you meant. Thanks for helping to expand my knowledge more accurately!

 

[syfry]

Each student represents a different trajectory, and some may converge, some may become more or less parallel, while others may diverge.

My wife was a teaching assistant, and she had to develop custom-tailored strategies for each student based on a unique set of weaknesses and strengths.Textbooks are useful, since they contain information from experts/practitioners and are usually peer-reviewed. When I was in high school, I used to browse textbooks at university libraries, and take notes. I would visit the university book store, browse textbooks and occasionally buy one or more, and I'd visit a technical book store and buy one or more books on various topics. I was probably in 9th or 10th grade when I bought a book on analytical geometry and another on calculus, since I know if I wanted to study physics and/or engineering, I need to learn calculus. As an undergraduate, I'd browse the graduate textbooks in order to understand what I would need to understand to get to those levels.

Maths and science textbooks were hard for me, a counselor in community college had gifted me a used textbook that I then struggled every time to perceive wtf it was even saying, until finally giving up from its indecipherable jargon. And there are students who appear to absorb the textbook's contents more readily.

Since some teachers seem to reach a greater percentage of students by better results in testing, that's probably sufficient to justify doing a study on ways to better the outcomes for most students.

Nothing will be universally effective, but we can try to get as close as possible.

Teachers and physicists are stuck using the technical language they were taught with. So the problem is rooted elsewhere in the approach.

Do we try to teach understanding of how the universe works, or do we instead teach familiarity with arbitrarily phrased words and models that, after first a mighty struggle, will only then start to offer more insights into the next realm of struggle?

If we were promoting understanding of how the universe works, how would we reply to a person from a lost tribe who asks us to explain energy?

Is energy a conserved quantity that corresponds to time symmetry with Noether’s theorem but only when conserved?

Or another explanation having to do with the 4 momentum, a type of bookkeeping, etc?

Would we expect a farm laborer since childhood who never heard of internet to learn English or any major language that's compatible with physics and maths in order for us to properly explain the concept of energy in a useful way?

Did someone at some point decide that we should ignore the possibility of finding any intuitive ways to explore cause & effect, to instead favor focusing on more technical aspects and results?

Perhaps we could've started from a model of energy as activity that can migrate between one thing(s) to another thing(s) by interacting in some way. The activity could perhaps be how something moves, how it'd vibrate or oscillate, also any tiny offshoots of heat in such manner. From there build an understanding that everyday people can more readily work with.

Then people are less likely to imagine the concept of energy as some type of ethereal embodiment of material stuff such as they felt a supposed" energy in the room" or perhaps supposedly imbued with "a strong presence of energy".

I'd claim that everyday people probably might feel disconnected from our current approach to teaching physics and maths.

And perhaps the problem (if indeed there really is a problem) is more solvable than we might suspect.

AI / machine learning is helping with translation between languages even when any lack words and concepts in another, and it's making progress in translating even the languages of animals into our potentially being able to decipher their communications. While it appears ready to help solve problems in seemingly unrelated areas such as computers coding and even in physics, by treating every area in a more unified approach as each being a type of language.

That's got potential to be another part of the toolbox in exploring ways to rethink and transform the language of maths and physics for a better understanding more universally. To me personally it's exciting to think about possibilities from putting a variety of methods to the test and arriving at best practices.

 

[PeterDonis]

If we were promoting understanding of how the universe works, how would we reply to a person from a lost tribe who asks us to explain energy?

I would first ask the person how long he wants to spend learning the concept. Unless his answer is "years", anything you tell him is going to be oversimplified and of limited usefulness.

You might also ask him why he cares what "energy" is. Unless his answer is "because I want to build a power plant to serve my village" or "because I want to be able to judge the policies of my government about energy to see if they make sense", or something like that, anything he "learns" is unlikely to be of much practical value.

Is energy a conserved quantity that corresponds to time symmetry with Noether’s theorem but only when conserved?

Obviously a person from a lost tribe with no education is not going to understand what that means--unless, as above, they're willing to spend years gaining the background knowledge that will make it make sense. There's a reason why we don't try to explain energy this way to anyone until they have at least an undergraduate-level understanding of physics.

Or another explanation having to do with the 4 momentum, a type of bookkeeping, etc?

Same answer as above.

Would we expect a farm laborer since childhood who never heard of internet to learn English or any major language that's compatible with physics and maths in order for us to properly explain the concept of energy in a useful way?

Not until they had spent years gaining the necessary background knowledge. Why would you expect anything else?

We keep coming back to the same issue: having realistic expectations about what it takes to actually learn how a physical theory works. The questions that I quoted above suggest that you expect that if we can find the right magical method of teaching, we can somehow make a person from a lost tribe, or a farm laborer with no background in the necessary subjects, understand a physics concept like "energy" in a useful way in a short period of time (where "short" means "of an order of magnitude smaller than years"). This seems like a totally unrealistic expectation to me, and, I suspect, to others who have posted in this thread. When I made a similar observation before, you said this was a "myth" about your expectations--but then why do you keep using examples that only make sense if it isn't a "myth", if your expectations really are that unrealistic?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Physics isn't about truth. It's about models.

We model a ball as a sphere of mass m. We do not try and consider all 10²⁴ atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. We don't use relativistic quantum field theory to describe the motion of all these particles. Because that would be silly. We model it as a sphere behaving classically because that tells us its behavior in a manner that is good enough.

Sometimes simple models work. Sometimes they need to be made more complicated to capture the behavior we are interested in. But starting with the simple and moving to the complex is not somehow depriving the student of "truth". There is no "truth". Models are all you get.

You may not like that, but that's how it is.

 

[syfry]

Unless his answer is "because I want to build a power plant to serve my village" or "because I want to be able to judge the policies of my government about energy to see if they make sense", or something like that, anything he "learns" is unlikely to be of much practical value.

Thanks for a thorough reply. We can now probably get to the heart of the matter.

I do agree with you that teaching in the currently established academic ways, with the current textbooks using the currently existing academic language, needs many years of effort and practice for a student to properly grasp even a single concept from the very many concepts they'll learn.

And the type of tests to the hypothesis I'm proposing could result in more an overhaul of epic proportions to the entire approach, to put it colorfully. From that perspective, our adding a great teacher into the current approach would be a mere bandaid onto its allegedly severe shortcomings.

You mentioned the practical value of learning (about a realm of knowledge in a brief overview). I claim there are two.

For the first practical value, let's examine a tiny bit of what the above hypothesis will attempt to explore, by comparing the existing approach (in its entirety) to how some random hypothetical village might've passed their stories from one generation to another.

Because of the great amount of verbal storytelling and knowledge, it's practical to train perhaps only one person who'll memorize the stories that pass from generation to generation. (or two people so there's a backup as a precaution)

Now imagine they had developed writing and they also developed an easy way to print. It's now practical for more people to carry the knowledge. But the advantages go beyond a mere count of people. Everyone is able to read at their own pace, review what they had read, return to any page, and quickly transfer the knowledge to so many more people.

Without the writing and printings, having a great teacher to pass the knowledge and storytelling works is a mere bandaid to their solving the problem of its preservation.

For the second practical value, having an effective enough overview can help the person to dispel superstitions that often are a counterproductive waste of their time and effort, instead of being actual solutions based on a better understanding.

There's a reason why we don't try to explain energy this way to anyone until they have at least an undergraduate-level understanding of physics.

Excellent, glad you do.

I still witness the overcomplicated explanations when a layperson is asking.

Not until they had spent years gaining the necessary background knowledge. Why would you expect anything else?

Such investment of time to get an actionably helpful overview of a concept is what the hypothesis will present as a problem to solve while proposing the types of tests that might confirm or discard what's hypothesized.

The current approach might be like trying to load in an entire sprawling landscape into an older video game as you explore. So what I'm instead considering would be like procedurally generating the landscape, or better yet reveal large areas of the landscape at a much lower resolution do you can make out the shrubs and buildings and objects as partially materialized and faintly recognizable.

Additionally arrange the houses in a progression that ranges from partially built wooden frames to completed homes with various of the steps in between.

Instead of starting with, say, tiling mixture theory and then flooring, followed by drywall mixture theory and walls, followed by plumbing materials and sealants theory, followed by roofing materials theory, all the maths you'll need for those, then start learning the house's exterior and its surroundings until you've covered the landscape that way.

No, the landscape should make sense from the beginning even if you're getting only a faint view, and then after deeper study you can start to get real clarity. (or, after deeper study you can start to get better than a grainy picture... but the grainy picture should still make sense and be accurate!)

I believe that a major part of the problem in our ability to teach is the lack of scientific testing you mentioned in an earlier comment.

Why do we start gravity with Newton and the apple without at all mentioning gravity's effect on time?

Because we must assume that the less we say, the less confusing it'll be to learn. And we assume only because there aren't any scientific studies to guide us on what we can actually include that isn't confusing.

Hopefully after starting to test the hypothesis, we can start to build a handy body of evidence to better our assumptions.

We keep coming back to the same issue: having realistic expectations about what it takes to actually learn how a physical theory works. The questions that I quoted above suggest that you expect that if we can find the right magical method of teaching, we can somehow make a person from a lost tribe, or a farm laborer with no background in the necessary subjects, understand a physics concept like "energy" in a useful way in a short period of time (where "short" means "of an order of magnitude smaller than years"). This seems like a totally unrealistic expectation to me, and, I suspect, to others who have posted in this thread. When I made a similar observation before, you said this was a "myth" about your expectations--but then why do you keep using examples that only make sense if it isn't a "myth", if your expectations really are that unrealistic?

So the miscommunication seems to be about expectations. The teaching is only one aspect, but that alone isn't nearly enough.

We are still using allegedly outdated ways of teaching. (yes I'm alleging... or rather, the hypothesis will do so)

Imagine if we approached the people who hadn't ever heard of internet, and if we wanted to communicate in their own language about what energy means, we could use visuals they're familiar with to do so using VR where they quickly immerse into the concept:

You both enter a VR realm, trained for translation into their language so the guided tour is ready. It'll explain energy as activity or potential activity that can migrate between things by interacting and often transforming.

Explain the VR is color coding the cause and effect, so they'll quickly recognize when the energy is migrating from one to another.

A pebble hits another which then moves a distance. Repeat a few ways and then start zooming in smoothly and slowing the action to see the pebble migrating bits of energy into friction until the pebble eventually halts.

A coconut rolls into another coconut and instantly halts as the 2nd coconut then has gained that energy and rolled away nearly as fast.

Eventually after a series of everyday instances, move into flames that start a campfire.

Also the burning of fat and oils, followed by boiling water or a stew.

Then, burning a clear substance.

Eventually they view into a car much like the one you had driven in and see again the clear substance, its energy migrating into parts of the car and into the air as heat, with the car moving as a result. (the details to include having been already well tested, but this demo would also be a continuation of that testing)

Whether the approach is realistic or unrealistic will become more apparent with testing. There isn't anything magical.

 

[gleem]

Perhaps you should first study the current science of learning before you spend any effort in developing a new approach to teaching.

 

[PeterDonis]

I do agree with you that teaching in the currently established academic ways, with the current textbooks using the currently existing academic language, needs many years of effort and practice for a student to properly grasp even a single concept from the very many concepts they'll learn.

Yes, but you think this is "fixable" by changing how we teach. I don't. I think it is inherent in the subject matter and the overall goals of teaching.

For example:

Why do we start gravity with Newton and the apple without at all mentioning gravity's effect on time?

Suppose we did start with "gravity's effect on time". "Gravity's effect on time" is still just one piece of how gravity works. You don't really understand gravity fully until you understand all of the pieces. Newton and the apple is just as much a piece of gravity as "gravity's effect on time". Does the order in which you learn the pieces really make that much of a difference if your goal is a full understanding? Would students really gain a full understanding of gravity that much faster (or even faster at all) if they started with "gravity's effect on time"? I doubt it.

However, now consider this: our teaching of gravity is not just for those students whose goal is a full understanding. We also want to give at least a partial understanding to students who aren't going to ever get a full understanding, because they don't need it and don't want it. And as a partial understanding, Newton and the apple is much, much more useful than "gravity's effect on time", since the latter is negligible under most circumstances while the former is part of everyone's everyday experience of gravity.

 

[haushofer]

You do realize that this is, at best an oversimplification on par with the rubber sheet oversimplification, right?
[...]
These pithy phrases have some value, but they are no substitute for understanding the quantitative behavior of gravity.

The problem is not in the analogy, but in taking the analogy to literally.

Like the bible.

 

[syfry]

However, now consider this: our teaching of gravity is not just for those students whose goal is a full understanding. We also want to give at least a partial understanding to students who aren't going to ever get a full understanding, because they don't need it and don't want it. And as a partial understanding, Newton and the apple is much, much more useful than "gravity's effect on time", since the latter is negligible under most circumstances while the former is part of everyone's everyday experience of gravity.

That's a geat point.

Maybe part of it comes down to what we consider useful.

In my personal view, people's everyday pondering about sci-fi space exploration and their having a reasonably accurate sense of what that'll take is useful as well.

Your critique is useful because of what it might be revealing. It's possible that since people who've learned physics with the current approach already know how gravity works, they wouldn't easily see a potential advantage by approaching with an experimental way even if easier to absorb the knowledge, because they already have the knowledge and cannot 'unsee' what they've seen, what they've practiced, etc, so cannot readily perceive how their own minds at an earlier student stage would've perceived the experimental approach.

I was sleepy in my earlier comment and hadn't written more clearly.

The current ways seem to teach only as disjointed parts of a scaffolding, then if we want to specialize, then our chosen disjointed part will become constructed and more usable to us as we dive deeper.

I'm instead envisioning to teach a distant view of the whole scaffold, that starts as a faint or ghostly view that'll materialize as you learn it more deeply, or you can specialize in an area so details emerge from its very grainy level of roughness to a more smooth and polished structure, but you still see the rest of its supporting structure, the scaffolding that's been there since the start.

Then for people unfamiliar with your area of physics, you can more easily point them to how what they know leads to what you know.

There's more to my hypothesis than that, for example the language. But hopefully I've communicated better now more fully awake.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Why do we start gravity with Newton and the apple without at all mentioning gravity's effect on time?

Well, you misunderstood "gravity bends time more than space". I would not hold this up as something to be emulated.

Further, most Physics 101 students don't need to know this. They do, however, need to know enough Newtonian gravity do that the planes and bridges they design stay where they are supposed to and don't come crashing down.

Finally, you seem to emphasize something other than physics as it is practiced. It's not about Truth, and its not about words. It's about constructing testable mathematical models. We disagree about the path because we disagree about the destination.

 

[PeterDonis]

Maybe part of it comes down to what we consider useful.

In my personal view, people's everyday pondering about sci-fi space exploration and their having a reasonably accurate sense of what that'll take is useful as well.

The question is, useful for what?

Useful for entertainment? Sure. Useful for practicing your critical thinking skills? Sure (but here you have to be careful, because if you don't already understand a subject thoroughly, you don't have the background to judge whether a claim someone else makes about it is correct, although you can still use various heuristics to spot questionable claims). Perhaps even useful for opening people's minds to possibilities they would not otherwise have thought of. Sci-fi has certainly done that in many cases.

But useful for actually doing scientific research? Or, for that matter, actual space exploration (as opposed to just writing about it in sci-fi)? Not at all. To do those things you need a full understanding of what we currently know in the relevant domains.

I'm instead envisioning to teach a distant view of the whole scaffold, that starts as a faint or ghostly view that'll materialize as you learn it more deeply, or you can specialize in an area so details emerge from its very grainy level of roughness to a more smooth and polished structure, but you still see the rest of its supporting structure, the scaffolding that's been there since the start.

Um, isn't this just describing what we do now? We give students an overview of all kinds of subjects in earlier parts of education; then we give more in-depth treatments of particular subjects in later parts of education when students are zeroing in on their particular subjects of interest. And the more in-depth treatments themselves have multiple levels, each leading to an increased understanding.

 

[syfry]

Well, you misunderstood "gravity bends time more than space". I would not hold this up as something to be emulated.

We agree then!

In my earlier comment:

Yes, definitely would involve physics teachers.

My point was that knowing about time at the beginning would've saved me from a lot of wasted struggle trying to mesh the dip in space with how gravity works. You might've not encountered people's complaints in video comments that it's using gravity to explain gravity, because you don't have a need to watch such videos. But those complaints are in the comments. And I had reached a similar conclusion independently.

My thought is that any teaching should address rampant misconceptions so they dwindle away as quickly as possible.

In reply to your next comment below, that's already in my list of things to immediately teach about science. That it's about modeling that match reality and that we can use to make useful predictions about the mechanics of the universe, how it works, how it's likely to evolve. That part is more about truth: the truth of how and why we do science. Or something like that reason. Which again, the physics teachers who'd be on would help to make that more accurate.

Finally, you seem to emphasize something other than physics as it is practiced. It's not about Truth, and its not about words. It's about constructing testable mathematical models.

 

[syfry]

But useful for actually doing scientific research? Or, for that matter, actual space exploration (as opposed to just writing about it in sci-fi)? Not at all. To do those things you need a full understanding of what we currently know in the relevant domains.

Of course! How does what I said disagree with that? (my communication skills really need work lol)

Um, isn't this just describing what we do now? We give students an overview of all kinds of subjects in earlier parts of education; then we give more in-depth treatments of particular subjects in later parts of education when students are zeroing in on their particular subjects of interest. And the more in-depth treatments themselves have multiple levels, each leading to an increased understanding.

I was thinking that very thing while writing the part you quoted. But the answer is too often no, that isn't how we do it now.

We memorize things without any idea how they'll match up to later things. We often stumble into realizing connections at some random later point.

I later learned about the time aspect in a video. Not in school, which annoyingly had used the dip in space.

They didn't have time in a faint scaffold of the whole picture. We didn't get a whole picture at even the most grainy level. Merely a random stew of disjointed parts of the scaffolding that's missing entire sections, which worsened the vagueness. (really felt that way)

 

[PeterDonis]

How does what I said disagree with that?

If it doesn't, that's good. But as you appear to realize from your comment about communication skills, your previous posts did not make this at all clear.

the answer is too often no, that isn't how we do it now.

Possibly it depends on the schools you went to or the classes you took. Certainly education quality is highly variable.

However, what you described in what I quoted is how we intend to do it now. So if your basic suggestion for fixing education is to actually do what we already say we intend, then I would agree, but I also would not call it any kind of groundbreaking teaching insight. Nor is this fix something that will get done by innovation in teaching methods. It will get done, if it ever does, by fixing the various perverse incentives that now largely determine the quality of education. Whatever innovations are needed to get that done are in fields very different from pedagogy, like economics and politics.

 

[gleem]

I would think after 51 posts that it might be helpful @syfry to restate the intent of this thread in one sentence and summarize what has been learned so far, i.e. the take-a-way idea(s) to see where things currently stand.

 

[syfry]

If it doesn't, that's good. But as you appear to realize from your comment about communication skills, your previous posts did not make this at all clear.

Yep, again my words could've been clearer.

I had meant low res with full accuracy, and my reply about agreeing with you was the part where you said for actual research and for actual spaceflight (as opposed to mere fulfillment from being able to imagine futuristic and sci-fi type of possibilities more accurately) that we'd need the more full picture.

Possibly it depends on the schools you went to or the classes you took. Certainly education quality is highly variable.

My reply was in error because I had misread your reply. Thought you had said that the way we currently do things is to give the students an overview of "all subjects" at the earlier levels. But you had actually said, "all types of subjects". (which differs from my 'whole picture' at the earliest we can)

We disagree about what schools have currently done. If I'm understanding your view correctly, it's that early on in our educational studies we dabble on simpler aspects from a variety of fields, then later we specialize.

I'm saying let's test a low res view of the most wide picture of science that we can possibly manage, and then zoom in on whichever parts we'd specialize in. And transform all of the difficult jargon into a much more learnable experience by scientifically verifying that people truly absorbed and grasp the deepest parts of what they're learning.

However, what you described in what I quoted is how we intend to do it now. So if your basic suggestion for fixing education is to actually do what we already say we intend, then I would agree, but I also would not call it any kind of groundbreaking teaching insight. Nor is this fix something that will get done by innovation in teaching methods.

Let's pause on what I'm suggesting and examine a real world outcome.

I think we can agree that the intro to the new video by Veritasium (if it's accurate about random people who by their age almost certainly should've learned how to order the sizes between a planet, a moon, a star, and a galaxy) reveals that people might not really be learning, even if they pass tests. They might instead be temporarily doing 'something', perhaps mere memorizing. And if so, then hopefully we can agree that scientifically testing the effect of the language (packed with difficult jargon) and approach to everything in how we teach, from textbooks to testing to real understanding, is vital:

 

[gleem]

And if so, then hopefully we can agree that scientifically testing the effect of the language (packed with difficult jargon) and approach to everything in how we teach, from textbooks to testing to real understanding:

Can we agree about what?

And if so, then hopefully we can agree that scientifically testing the effect of the language ..... is?, has?, will?, . . .what?

 

[syfry]

Can we agree about what?

That it's vital. Edited that in now.

 

[PeterDonis]

I had meant low res with full accuracy

There is no such thing.

 

[syfry]

There is no such thing.

Perhaps you're considering formalism as accuracy?

I'm considering accuracy as 'matching with reality'. (instead of merely matching with arbitrarily decided phrasing / convention)

Low res and wide scope:

The spinach plant has gotten its iron from the asteroid mix of Earth's crust.

Specializing at a higher res:

The crystal arrangements of certain asteroids. Genetic variations among a selection of spinach plants that affect their iron uptake. Etc.

The low res still presents a grand view that immediately informs people about how so much of what we see in everyday tools and machinery is from impacts and stuff is continually raining down from outer space in micro amounts. Immersive visuals could accompany every object tracing generically unnamed ingredients back to origins from outer space, with the older and more dense stuff from Earth's earlier hotter era having already gradually sunken while Earth was less solid.

Low res after transforming the jargon and conventions (for max learning with the deepest understanding) could rethink how we categorize things, maybe revisit some of the past ways and merge them with our updated understanding from the later discoveries.

We could teach that each of elements are hydrogen (the earliest atom leftover from the start of our models for the universe) in different amounts from its single atom to fused in greater numbers that change their behavior as we can see by the variety we encounter. Take inspiration from Prout's hypothesis and the whole number rule.

Electrons can link together atoms into groups that add or transform behaviors.

These are ideas for low res. Obviously would need work and accuracy by physicists, but a type of accuracy that prioritizes what we observe in nature and experiments, over arbitrarily decided formalism that hadn't ever been scientifically confirmed as effective for teaching.

 

[PeterDonis]

I'm considering accuracy as 'matching with reality'.

"Matching with reality" is not a binary property. "Accuracy" is usually taken to mean not just matching with reality, but matching it to a very high degree, i.e., with very small error bars and very reliable predictions. "Low res", on the other hand, implies matching with reality only vaguely or generally, with predictions being similarly vague or general and therefore not very reliable (since it's much easier to fool yourself into thinking a vague or general prediction has come true when it hasn't).

Let's try an example:

Low res and wide scope:

The spinach plant has gotten its iron from the asteroid mix of Earth's crust.

Do you have a reference for this? What does the reference actually say? What is the actual "high res" science for this?

 

[PeterDonis]

a type of accuracy that prioritizes what we observe in nature and experiments, over arbitrarily decided formalism

I don't know where you are getting this from. Every theory of physics we have is only accepted and taught in the first place because of what we observe in nature and experiments. And the formalism is not "arbitrarily decided": it is driven by what we observe in nature and experiments. Physicists don't make up a bunch of formalisms and then go check to see which ones match experiment. Physicists in general have to be dragged kicking and screaming to new theoretical formalisms, because constructing theoretical formalisms is hard, and once you've spent your education and career learning one, learning a different one is even harder. So physicists would much rather believe that the formalisms they already know will work--which means that when you find them admitting that current formalisms don't work and they have to develop new ones, it's a sign of something very big (as in the development of quantum mechanics in the early part of the 20th century).

 

[syfry]

"Matching with reality" is not a binary property. "Accuracy" is usually taken to mean not just matching with reality, but matching it to a very high degree, i.e., with very small error bars and very reliable predictions. "Low res", on the other hand, implies matching with reality only vaguely or generally, with predictions being similarly vague or general and therefore not very reliable (since it's much easier to fool yourself into thinking a vague or general prediction has come true when it hasn't).

Yep, that's the type. The more accurate, the better. Good point to bring up!

"Low res", on the other hand, implies matching with reality only vaguely or generally, with predictions being similarly vague or general and therefore not very reliable.

And that's a great point. Will keep that in mind. Want to be careful to avoid a counterproductive impression with the wording, will ponder alternatives.

Do you have a reference for this? What does the reference actually say? What is the actual "high res" science for this?

It's only from general knowledge about the more dense things having sunken, got no idea when the papers would've been written. Also an educated guess that plants cannot create elements, probably only molecules.

Part of the reason to bring physicists on board, and physics teachers is to replace my investigate efforts with people who have more knowledge, training, and much better experience.

And every long journey begins one step at a time, so no reason to do nothing until then.

Rather do my best with what little I have, to prepare a rough outline of the vision that'll serve as a crude example and also get the point across. Then, we can refine and do much better than my own efforts.

 

[PeterDonis]

It's only from general knowledge about the more dense things having sunken

Sorry, I don't see the connection. I think you are misinterpreting something, but if you can't give an actual reference, I have no way of knowing what.

You might think this point is not relevant to the thread, but I think it is. If your claim actually has no scientific basis, it is a bad example of how to give someone a general idea of a field. And if you can't even give a reference for where you got this one simple statement, what am I supposed to think about your chances of success at the far more ambitious endeavor you are embarked on?

an educated guess that plants cannot create elements

That's correct, since plants don't have nuclear reactions going on inside them. Neither do any living things. Elements are created in stars, except for a few of the lightest ones which were created in the early universe.

However, I still don't see how this supports the claim you made about spinach and asteroids.

Part of the reason to bring physicists on board, and physics teachers is to replace my investigate efforts with people who have more knowledge, training, and much better experience.

And yet you somehow think you can come up with a way of teaching that is better than what those people have come up with after centuries of effort. That does not seem credible to me.

 

[syfry]

I don't know where you are getting this from. Every theory of physics we have is only accepted and taught in the first place because of what we observe in nature and experiments. And the formalism is not "arbitrarily decided": it is driven by what we observe in nature and experiments. Physicists don't make up a bunch of formalisms and then go check to see which ones match experiment.

It's possible I'm using the incorrect wording.

I merely meant the language of physics, the choice of symbols, jargon, etc.

Like if for some reason 3n started to be rewritten as 3 • n, and 1x as 1 * x, etc, that shouldn't have anything to do with accuracy or observations of nature. Those are purely human choices on how to represent the mathematical readings, I assume.

Same with labels and categories. What they mean is based on observations, but the actual words chosen are often arbitrarily decided. That isn't tested for learnability.

Orthogonal vs perpendicular vs normal are arbitrarily decided wordings. Rephrasing the wordings and rethinking the categorize to be more learnable while even more useful, has nothing to do with accuracy. Those are approaches. The meaning is what really matters and we can choose words and categories that make more sense intuitively with the meaning we assign, as long as we ensure that everything fits with what we observe in nature and from experiments to a high degree of accuracy.

Some type of UX engineer might be helpful.

 

[PeterDonis]

I merely meant the language of physics, the choice of symbols, jargon, etc.

You seem to think these are arbitrarily chosen and nobody ever stops to think about improving them. That is not at all the case. Some of the most important advances in physics have been advances in notation and language; even if, as you say, none of the actual physics changes when we change notation and language, our ability to advance our knowledge of physics can improve greatly.

For example, Schwarzschild discovered the solution to the vacuum Einstein Field Equations that bears his name only a few months after Einstein came up with the Field Equation itself--it was the first exact solution discovered. But for decades nobody really understood what it meant--because physicists were stuck with bad notation and language (in this case, a bad choice of coordinates and a bad choice of language in describing what we now call the event horizon as a "singularity"). Then David Finkelstein, in a few lines of algebra, discovered a new coordinate choice that drastically changed the way physicists understood the Schwarzschild solution--and the next decade there was a "golden age" of research into black holes (that term itself was invented by John Wheeler during the "golden age"--previous terms for it had hindered understanding). All from a simple change in notation (different coordinates) and a simple change in one term of the language physicists used.

Another example, which has applications in many fields of physics, would be modern vector and tensor notation, as compared with the extremely cumbersome notation that Einstein, for example, had to use when he worked on General Relativity, or that Maxwell had to use when he developed the equations of classical electrodynamics that now bear his name (although the equations as we know them now look nothing like the ones he knew, because of the change in notation). Papers from back then are almost unreadable to people today simply because we are so used to the much better notation we now have that we can't easily wrap our minds around the notation that was used back then.

 

[syfry]

Sorry, I don't see the connection. I think you are misinterpreting something, but if you can't give an actual reference, I have no way of knowing what.

From these very physicsforums the answer seems to be that all iron had gone to the center. Quoting the snippet below:

While residual heat from the collision of the material that formed the Earth was significant, heating from radioactive materials in this mass further increased the temperature until a critical condition was reached, when the material was molten enough to allow movement. At this point, the denser iron and nickel, evenly distributed throughout the mass, sank to the centre of the planet to form the core - an important process of planetary differentiation. The gravitational potential energy released by the sinking of the dense NiFe globules increased the temperature of the protoplanet above the melting point resulting in a global silicate magma which accelerated the process. This event occurred at about 500 million years into the formation of the planet.

The previous comment to that might be saying that iron in certain molecules had escaped the sinking, but I'm not sure, But if so, that seems to contradict the quoted part above.

And this reply in a different post seems to differ too:

Separation was never perfect - we still have plenty of iron in the crust, even if the majority went down to the core.

While the next reply brings up the asteroids:

Later comet and meteor bombardment also brought heavy elements to the outer crust.

Then, the next reply after that seems to imply that all of the iron would've sunken at that time:

Iron sank into core not only because it is heavy but because it is insoluble/immiscible in molten rock (and heavier than rock).

No one challenged any of those claims and people appear to take claims seriously at these forums (a good habit!) so now it's difficult to know if all of the iron had or hadn't sunken to the core.

I had gotten the info from a knowledgeable physics person though, about all of the later iron having arrived from asteroids. Which physics person, I don't remember but can do some digging and return with they info if I find it.

what am I supposed to think about your chances of success at the far more ambitious endeavor you are embarked on?

I was expecting from the start that you probably consider my odds at near zero, and possibly lower into negatives. I keep an open mind and could be wrong, though.

It's ok either way, I'm fine with naysayings, a good choice since there's such an overabundant supply for any goals.

I had qualified the part about Iron and the rest with:

"These are ideas for low res. Obviously would need work and accuracy by physicists..."

 

[syfry]

You seem to think these are arbitrarily chosen and nobody ever stops to think about improving them. That is not at all the case. Some of the most important advances in physics have been advances in notation and language; even if, as you say, none of the actual physics changes when we change notation and language, our ability to advance our knowledge of physics can improve greatly.

For example, Schwarzschild discovered the solution to the vacuum Einstein Field Equations that bears his name only a few months after Einstein came up with the Field Equation itself--it was the first exact solution discovered. But for decades nobody really understood what it meant--because physicists were stuck with bad notation and language (in this case, a bad choice of coordinates and a bad choice of language in describing what we now call the event horizon as a "singularity"). Then David Finkelstein, in a few lines of algebra, discovered a new coordinate choice that drastically changed the way physicists understood the Schwarzschild solution--and the next decade there was a "golden age" of research into black holes (that term itself was invented by John Wheeler during the "golden age"--previous terms for it had hindered understanding). All from a simple change in notation (different coordinates) and a simple change in one term of the language physicists used.

Another example, which has applications in many fields of physics, would be modern vector and tensor notation, as compared with the extremely cumbersome notation that Einstein, for example, had to use when he worked on General Relativity, or that Maxwell had to use when he developed the equations of classical electrodynamics that now bear his name (although the equations as we know them now look nothing like the ones he knew, because of the change in notation). Papers from back then are almost unreadable to people today simply because we are so used to the much better notation we now have that we can't easily wrap our minds around the notation that was used back then.

That's great. Thanks for the helpful info!

I'm hypothesizing that doing the same with a goal that everyday people can learn it much faster will benefit science.

Scientific testing will either confirm that it's possible and effective, or, that it isn't.

 

[gleem]

Some type of UX engineer might be helpful.

UX engineer? Now you are doing what you are ranting about, undefined jargon. So I looked it up and learned something. No problem. Why is this a major problem for others?

Orthogonal vs perpendicular vs normal are arbitrarily decided wordings.

These words are not arbitrary, They have a common characteristic right angle but apply to different contexts. Perpendicular: meeting at a right angle, Orthogonal crossing at a right angle, normal meeting a tangent line (or tangent plane) at a right angle. Upon meeting these words for the first time they are either defined by the instructor or if knowledge is assumed you look it up in a dictionary in the corrected context which is assumed to be known.

 

[Astronuc]

Since some teachers seem to reach a greater percentage of students by better results in testing, that's probably sufficient to justify doing a study on ways to better the outcomes for most students.

That is already occurring with the American Association of Physics Teachers, a professional membership association of scientists dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching. https://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/

Then again, "Physics teaching in the United States has a chicken-and-egg problem. Many districts and schools (typically, diverse urban schools and rural schools) do not offer the course or perhaps have a single section. Independent of the national teacher shortage, universities produce few physics teachers, with two-thirds of institutions producing none."
https://www.edutopia.org/article/ho...-math-teacher-can-confidently-tackle-physics/

The problem in most countries is a diverse regional approach to education and economic activity in general: urban, suburban, rural, remote. I have observed this in my personal life and in my ancestry.

Teachers and physicists are stuck using the technical language they were taught with. So the problem is rooted elsewhere in the approach.

Do we try to teach understanding of how the universe works, or do we instead teach familiarity with arbitrarily phrased words and models that, after first a mighty struggle, will only then start to offer more insights into the next realm of struggle?

Teachers and physicists, or more generally, mathematicians, scientists and engineers are not 'stuck' with language with which they are taught. Folks tend to use an established convention or terminology.

In teaching science, we try to teach an understanding of how the universe work, and in some cases manipulated it on a local level (applied physics/engineering), and part of that teaching is using a convention/terminology. All language is arbitrary, and one has to learn a language over time - hence primary education (kindergarden through 12th grade, then university, then a career)

If we were promoting understanding of how the universe works, how would we reply to a person from a lost tribe who asks us to explain energy?

Is the population of the lost tribe in the paleolithic, neolithic or later stage of development. Somehow, I don't think a member of a lost tribe (say in the depths of the Amazon jungle) is going to ask about an explanation of energy. That might come years or decades later after first contact. Meanwhile, folks would be learning to communicate. Then maybe someone might ask about how the universe works, or how things work.

Would we expect a farm laborer since childhood who never heard of internet to learn English or any major language that's compatible with physics and maths in order for us to properly explain the concept of energy in a useful way?

This odd query is an example of non sequitur. Many of my ancestors were farmers/laborers or miners from childhood, yet they spoke English, or at least a dialect of English. More recent ancestors received more education, but it was certainly not uniform.

Maths and science textbooks were hard for me,

That appears to be the crux of the matter at hand.

Learning/understanding is part individual capability (nature) and part education (nurture), and each person represents a unique combination. For whatever reason, some folks will absorb information readily and others will struggle. Some will obtain advanced degrees, while many others may not even complete a primary education, and there is everyone in between.

Some will have careers devoted to various aspects of physics (SR/GR, cosmology, astrophysics, HEP, . . . ), or more generally math and science, while others will never experience those same aspects of physics or science on a personal or daily basis, and most of the latter group will never have such a need.

 

[PeterDonis]

No one challenged any of those claims and people appear to take claims seriously at these forums (a good habit!) so now it's difficult to know if all of the iron had or hadn't sunken to the core.

No process is 100% perfect, so the "iron catastrophe" referred to in that previous thread, while it explains why the Earth's core is made of iron, in no way required that every single iron atom went to the core. Even a tiny residue remaining in the crust would be a lot in terms of the Earth's biosphere.

To run some numbers, the Earth's total mass is about $6 \times 10^{24}$ kg, of which about 32% is iron [1], so the total mass of iron in the Earth is about $2 \times 10^{24}$ kg. By comparison, the Earth's crust is only about 1% of its total mass [1], or about $6 \times 10^{22}$ kg, and of that, about 50,000 parts per million, or 5%, is iron [2], for a total mass of iron in the crust of about $3 \times 10^{20}$ kg, or about $1.5 \times 10^{-4}$ of the total iron in the Earth. That's a tiny residue which could easily have been left behind in the "iron catastrophe". Of course we also know that meteorites that hit the Earth often contain iron, so some of the iron in the crust is from that source; but that's very, very different from claiming that all of the iron in the crust is from meteorites.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mass

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth's_crust

I had gotten the info from a knowledgeable physics person though, about all of the later iron having arrived from asteroids. Which physics person, I don't remember but can do some digging and return with they info if I find it.

You should do this before making a claim, not after. Part of science is supposed to be that you don't make claims that you can't back up. If you can't remember a source for the claim, you can't back it up.

 

[gleem]

Is the population of the lost tribe in the paleolithic, neolithic or later stage of development. Somehow, I don't think a member of a lost tribe (say in the depths of the Amazon jungle) is going to ask about an explanation of energy. That might come years or decades later after first contact. Meanwhile, folks would be learning to communicate. Then may someone might ask about how the universe works, or how things work.

Maths and science textbooks were hard for me,

Textbooks are written in different styles for different types of readers. Sometimes the author in an explanation uses words that we usually associate with a slightly different meaning that does not fit the context of the text leaving us confused. The author has a particular train of thought and a lot of prior knowledge that will determine how things are written. The author has to make assumptions about the reader's knowledge which may not be suitable for all readers. Some texts are better for some topics than others. Text tend not to be designed for self-study. One might need several texts to learn a subject well.

 

[Mark44]

Part of the reason to bring physicists on board, and physics teachers is to replace my investigate efforts with people who have more knowledge, training, and much better experience.

And yet you somehow think you can come up with a way of teaching that is better than what those people have come up with after centuries of effort. That does not seem credible to me.

Nor to me. And yet, our archaic way of teaching the sciences has led to manned landings on the moon and unmanned landings on Mars, not to mention such scientific advances as computers, cell phones, GPS, and many other wonders of the modern world.

I merely meant the language of physics, the choice of symbols, jargon, etc.

"Jargon" seems to be one of your favorite words, seemingly used to subtly denigrate the terminology used in subjects that you either don't understand or have great difficulty in understanding. Every field of study, and not just in the sciences and mathematics, has its own set of terminology and symbolism. These all stem from some individual or group of individuals, working independently, who first started thinking about and recording their thoughts about that field. Given that multiple people wrote about these fields, it's natural that they came up with different terminology.

Most of the scientific or mathematics textbooks that I have seen include a glossary at the back that contains definitions of important terms used in the book. Many will also have a list of the symbols used, also with definitions of these symbols.