The story of motion

Gyan — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:26:45 -0800

Motion Mountain - "The project aims to produce a simple, vivid and up-to-date introduction to modern physics, with emphasis on the fundamental ideas of motion. 'Simple' means that concepts are stressed more than formalism; 'vivid' means that the reader is continuously challenged; 'up-to-date' means that modern research and ideas about unification are included."

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:42:20 -0800

Very nice typography.

By: sergeant sandwich

sergeant sandwich — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 20:40:29 -0800

i've seen this before - tried to read through it, but i kept getting lost. traditional intro physics textbooks typically adhere to a well-established formula: start with newtonian dynamics, energy and work; that segues into oscillatory motion and wave mechanics, which flows into electromagnetism, and then onto light and optics, with thermo thrown in somewhat haphazardly and maybe a shallow attempt at covering special relativity or quantum mechanics thrown in for kicks. i think it's a good structure because each major section is somewhat self-contained and builds nicely on what came before. while i admire the attempt to try a different approach (and the free online-ness), i think this is a little incoherent and hard to follow. i agree that physics education should be less compartmentalized and more synthesized, but this feels like it's just jumping all over the place. i also think it's a neat idea to include more modern science, but i don't know if it'd be very meaningful without knowing the basics first. i taught a first-year physics lab last year, and had a few smart groups who were doing well with the basic stuff and wanted to do something more interesting. so i let them work on some of the more advanced "modern physics" experiments, things like determining crystal structure via electron diffraction, or measuring gamma-ray spectra of whatever radioisotope. i was hoping it'd pique their interest but i feel like it went way over their heads: they could follow the instructions and do the experiment but totally missed the forest for the trees. this could be due to a teaching failure on my part, or perhaps that they were rushed (it was near the end of the term), but i think a big part is that modern-physics concepts were developed after classical ones, and necessarily build on them. it's a tall order to climb all the way to the topmost set of giants' shoulders without standing on any of the intermediate ones first. maybe this book would be good for a "soft" physics course, something designed for humanities students perhaps. but i don't think it's a good way to teach physics to someone who's going to try to do something useful with it. (then again, maybe i'm just well-indoctrinated!)

By: c13

c13 — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 05:05:24 -0800

Great post. I don't know, sergean sandwich, my college physics course was pretty traditional. I hated the labs because I was bored to tears counting the swings of the pendulum or connecting a light bulb to a battery through a variable resistor. Frankly, I'd rather stuff be way over my head than being bored.

By: gwint

gwint — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 07:02:42 -0800

I've really been enjoying the webcasts of Physics for future Presidents. It's an introductory physics course taught at Berkeley. The course textbook is also available for download.

Comments on: The story of motion

The story of motion

By: delmoi

By: sergeant sandwich

By: c13

By: gwint