Posted on 05/17/2007 10:53:43 AM PDT by neverdem
I explained Newton’s second law, and he told me that the carpet acted as a spring that “absorbed” some of the weight.
I drew the free body diagram, and tried to explain again.
Newton’s three laws are the basis of all statics and dynamics and yet he had no “real’ understanding of them.
I call bullshit. I had to take a course in general relativity to get a B.S. in Biology at M.I.T.!
Tipler has produced a mountain from a molehill. Practical physics is not affected to any appreciable degree by General Relativity or the Standard Model, foundational though they may be. By contrast, I bet that not knowing Shakespeare is far more damaging to English graduates.
Probably not. I mean, what recent English grad is going to ask "do you want fries with that?" in iambic pentameter anyway? :)
}:-)4
I call bullshit. I had to take a course in general relativity to get a B.S. in Biology at M.I.T.!
I call an anecdotal report from a graduate of one of the the best schools, if not the best science school in the country, who momentarily lost reading comprehension.
I had another (recent grad) engineer try to explain to me that people weigh less if the scale is on a carpet.
I explained Newton’s second law, and he told me that the carpet acted as a spring that “absorbed” some of the weight.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Surely you jest! I knew better than that by age 12!
The big problem is with Ol' Slick's comment that _ Everyone who wants a college should get one....This is a WASTE of taxpayers resources. Kids should be able to do algebra and write a paragraph BEFORE they get to college,,,,,,,,,
I'd need to know more about the material presented in the new courses. Especially for Harvard lawyers (who may have multinational practices), knowing something about international law is probably a good thing.
OUCH! Ur bean to strik heer...........;^)
Get the Google toolbar. It has a great spell-check function.
Sorry. Since so many of the science posters have been banned, there's no help for it anymore.
I disagree with Tipler. I took courses in general relativity as an undergrad (under Max Dresden at Stony Brook) and as a graduate student (under Lay Nam Chang at Virginia Tech), but those were elective, and should have been.
At the undergraduate level, few students have the math background to approach it. Very few students who take a B.S. in physics will ever need it. They'd do better to take an advanced course in quantum mechanics, or a course in computer programming.
At the graduate level, typically two years of coursework are required, but those two years are wall-to-wall mechanics, E&M, and quantum mechanics, and it's barely adequate. After that, the student may elect to take more courses, but not too many: he really needs to get cracking on his research. There's no time to waste.
I took the GR courses because the subject interested me, but I've never had to use my knowledge in any professional capacity. The courses I took in the Standard Model were relevant to my specialty, but weren't (and shouldn't have been) required.
To get fries or not to get fries, that is the question.
Weather it is nobler in the mind to suffer
the onion rings of outrageous halitosis
or to take up a baked potato against a sea of greasy fried food
It turns out the Boston Globe reported the changes at the time: I’m just pasting the URL because every time I tried to post the link, it didn’t work. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/10/07/harvard_law_to_refocus_the_first_year/
b
Every year for four years running, my dad dug up this garden plot adjacent to the house; my job was to stack all the rocks and stones dug up and then to weed the sparse growth resulting from his hard labor in the weeks to follow planting.
To this day I hate working in the garden and refuse to start one of my own.
A year before my dad died and just after I had left home to join the Air Force I asked him why he kept digging up what I had come to call the rock garden.
His answer was that that was what his dad and his dad before him had done and he thought it was expected of him.
The summer before my dad died he dug up the lower level of the lot where the dirt lay up against the fence and he grew the finest green onions he had ever grown.
He said he was saving them all to use as sets for the real garden up beside the rocks for the following year.
After I left the service, at my sister’s pleading, I went to the graveyard where my dad had been buried.
After walking around all afternoon all I found were rocks and wild onions.
You can’t teach physics and evolution in the same school. The physicists will ask too many questions of the evolutionists and ruin their theory/religion.
I don’t think that international law or Islamic law should take PRECEDENCE over US law, especially in the freshman year.
Google won’t pick the difference between effect and affect.
Anyway, my freshman English comp teacher said that studies show that the brightest and fastest readers are terrible spellers, so our class was the only section required to include spelling in the curriculum. (No excuse, though)
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