- #1
lauchlan
- 5
- 0
Do you guys think it is possible and worthwhile to pose complicated physics problems in simple ways to lay people and children with little or no knowledge of the subject and see what answers they come up with.
I will use an example to explain what i mean.
If you told people to make an equation from various concepts. If you gave them energy, velocity, mass, volume, light speed and maybe a few others and you gave this to a few million people, how long would it be before one of them came up with E=MC2?
I know this is a massive stretch but i somehow think that unlearned people will not be thinking about the things that "won't" work and even though 99.9% will spit out pure garbage, maybe that tiny fraction could stumble upon something profound, possibly without even knowing what they have done. It is clear to me how easily this question could be blown completely out of proportion and argued down to the point of ridicule, but i pose it nonetheless.
It does seem that within many fields of study, people are hindered by the textbook writers in that the most knowledgeable people seem to create the confines within which other people in the filed are to work if they want to be taken seriously. I'm not saying this is entirely a bad thing, but there must exist the possibility that these confines are not the true boundaries. Unlearned people won't care about the boundaries or about making stupid mistakes because ultimately nobody is going to call them incompetent .
Would be great to hear what you guys think about this.
I will use an example to explain what i mean.
If you told people to make an equation from various concepts. If you gave them energy, velocity, mass, volume, light speed and maybe a few others and you gave this to a few million people, how long would it be before one of them came up with E=MC2?
I know this is a massive stretch but i somehow think that unlearned people will not be thinking about the things that "won't" work and even though 99.9% will spit out pure garbage, maybe that tiny fraction could stumble upon something profound, possibly without even knowing what they have done. It is clear to me how easily this question could be blown completely out of proportion and argued down to the point of ridicule, but i pose it nonetheless.
It does seem that within many fields of study, people are hindered by the textbook writers in that the most knowledgeable people seem to create the confines within which other people in the filed are to work if they want to be taken seriously. I'm not saying this is entirely a bad thing, but there must exist the possibility that these confines are not the true boundaries. Unlearned people won't care about the boundaries or about making stupid mistakes because ultimately nobody is going to call them incompetent .
Would be great to hear what you guys think about this.