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Science Education Info Home relativity made simple relativity & simultaneity spacetime diagrams - email links
Science and education |
The spectacular development of physical science during the 20th century led to a multitude of new theories, a number of which have been added to the curriculum of physics education. This has led educators to offer advanced topics such as quantum chromo dynamics and weak interactions as compulsory courses to the graduate student. This necessitates the introduction of quantum mechanics at the undergraduate level, while formerly quantum mechanics was usually regarded as a graduate subject. Obviously this comes at a price and it is interesting to note that H. Goldstein, in the preface to his 1950 edition of Classical Mechanics complains how "graduate students are all too frequently inadequately prepared", while they (in 1950) didn't have to deal with all the new theories that today's science student is confronted with. More and more science education professionals regard classic texts like J.D. Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics as "too difficult, putting the student off" so it is tempting to believe that the growing emphasis in science education on quantum mechanics and derived theories goes at the expense of classical science education as well at the expense of the science student's mathematical foundation, that runs parallel with his/her education in classical science. Furthermore we note that the tremendous mathematical complexity of contemporary science has lead to researchers to complain that they are finding it hard to keep up with new developments in mathematics. It's purely a matter of speculation to assert that there would be a link with the above description of how the science curriculum has changed over the years, but it seems clear that today's graduate student is not as mathematically astute as his colleague of 50 years ago, just compare Morse and Feshbach's "Methods of Theoretical Physics" with today's "Mathematics for physicists" -type of books. Without claiming to offer "the Holy Grail", Science and Education Information seeks to improve accessibility of physical science without shunning the rigor of classical physics education. We believe the student is not helped by "watering down" a physics course in terms of mathematics and we will point the student towards new and fresh mathematics texts that have come available during the past decade. There the physics student can profit from the fact that a university mathematics course attracts a more diverse group of students that just the intellectual elite that it formerly did. Hence mathematics authors have had to adapt their style and pedagogical methods to help the capable but sub-genius student to complete his course, greatly to the benefit of physics students, who generally find pure mathematics texts hard to read.
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