Posted on 05/17/2007 10:53:43 AM PDT by neverdem
A recent study shows that Shakespeare is no longer a required course for English majors at the overwhelming majority of American elite universities. This is not a surprise: most people are well aware that students are no longer taught the basics in the humanities departments.
Unfortunately, the situation is just as bad in physics departments. At the overwhelming majority of physics departments at American universities, even the most elite, key elements of basic physics are no longer taught. For example, I am aware of no American university that requires, for an undergraduate degree in physics, a course in general relativity, which is Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity. At the overwhelming majority of American universities, including Harvard, M.I.T. and Cal Tech, one is not even required to take a course in general relativity to get a Ph.D. in physics! As a consequence, most American Ph.D.’s in physics do not understand general relativity. If a problem arises that requires knowledge of Einstein’s theory of gravity, almost all American physicists can only look blank. This is in spite of the fact that general relativity has been known to be the correct theory of gravity for almost a century.
And it gets worse. The greatest achievement of physics since World War II has been the discovery of the Standard Model of particle physics, a unified theory of all forces and matter not including gravity. The electromagnetic force — light and radio waves — and the weak force responsible for radioactive decay, are shown to be two aspects of one force, the electroweak force, by the Standard Model. The Standard Model also explains how all fundamental particles obtain their mass and it predicts that matter can be directly converted into energy – which hints at a new energy source far more powerful than nuclear energy.
The Standard Model has been experimentally confirmed, and some dozen and more Nobel Prizes in physics have been awarded for the discovery and experimental confirmation of the Standard Model. Yet I am aware of no physics department in the United States that requires a course in the Standard Model for an undergraduate degree in physics. Very few, if any, require a course in the Standard Model even for a Ph.D. in physics. It’s as if law schools stopped requiring students to take courses in crucial subjects like contracts and property law.
So one can get an undergraduate degree in physics and even a Ph.D., without knowing anything at all about the fundamental forces that control the universe at the most basic level. Since our entire civilization requires at least somebody knows basic physics, requires that at least people who have Ph.D.’s in physics know basic physics, this is a disaster. If very few physicists know the Standard Model, it is unlikely that anyone will attempt to develop the new source of energy which the Standard Model shows is possible in principle.
The basic reasons why modern physics is not covered in required courses are identical to the basic reasons why Shakespeare is not covered: (1) the faculty in both cases want to teach their narrow specialty rather than the basic courses in their field, (2) the faculty members in both cases no longer understand the basic material in their own field, (3) the faculty no longer believe there are fundamental truths in their own disciplines. I'm sure that many members of typical university’s English faculty no longer have a basic understanding of Shakespeare. How could they, if they themselves have never taken a course on Shakespeare? A degree in English is no longer a guarantee that the degree holder has a basic knowledge of Shakespeare or other great writers.
Similarly, a degree in physics from an American university is no guarantee that the student with this degree understands basic physics. The physics faculty’s increasing ignorance of basic physics is starting to show up in their research, as I describe at length in my recent book, The Physics of Christianity (Doubleday, 2007). I show that, across all disciplines, a collapse of belief in Christianity over the past several decades among university faculty has been accompanied by a collapse in the belief that there is fundamental truth which should be imparted to students.
Every undergraduate majoring in physics, or at the very least, every graduate student in physics, should be required to take a two-semester sequence: one semester on general relativity, and one semester on the Standard Model. Both courses have been taught for decades to physics students as an elective, but no physics department will require them.
Once, on my own initiative, I forced a required course on the Standard Model at the graduate level, since I firmly believe that knowledge of the Standard Model should be required for all Ph.D.’s in physics. I achieved this by changing a required two-semester graduate course in electromagnetism into a one-semester course in electromagnetism, and a one-semester course on the Standard Model. I used an undergraduate textbook for the Standard Model course.
The students violently objected. They didn’t see any reason to learn the Standard Model. They saw no reason why they should know any basic physics beyond what was standard 50 years ago. The other faculty backed them up. This occurred more than 10 years ago, and since then not one Ph.D. student at Tulane has been taught the Standard Model.
The reason the physics faculty backed the graduate students up — supported them in their desire to remain ignorant of the central fundamental theory of physics — is that they themselves were never taught the Standard Model when they were graduate students, and thus they saw no reason to require their own students to learn it. I wasn’t taught the Standard Model either when I was a graduate student — it was in the process of being discovered when I was a graduate student — but it was obviously something every physicist should know, so I taught myself the theory. These same physics faculty were never taught general relativity either (I was; and in fact my Ph.D. thesis was on a problem in general relativity), so they see no reason why physics Ph.D.’s should be taught general relativity.
I fear that in the very near future, education in physics will have to be obtained from some source other than a university. It is becoming increasingly clear that this corruption of education is probably universal across all disciplines. If so, then all advanced education will have to be obtained outside of the university. And if that is the case, then why should universities exist at all?
Nobody wants to know anything that they don’t absolutely have to know anymore.
That was my psych prof from 40+ years ago.....loved to tease the whole class.............Sex was the old coots thing.....
It's actually worse than that. The FCC is more likely to require the owners of nearby structures to detune them (at the structure owner's expense) so as not to interfere with the broadcast station's coverage. (Assuming this is an AM broadcast station.)
It's a common problem, signals are induced into water towers, cellphone towers, high voltage power lines supporting structures, etc. and this can be a problem at some distance (I've seen structures requiring detuning a mile or more from the AM station tower.)
The usual solution is to add detuning skirts to the re-radiating structure, so as to make it "invisible" to the AM radio signals. That's not so easy to do if the re-radiating structures are moving or change their height.
Jack
Law students aren't called freshmen. They're graduate students at that point.
There is a lot of value to learning basic international law early on, though. Treaty construction is a lot like statutory construction - and most law students have very little exposure to that in their first year of law school (depending on how much their Contracts professor emphasizes the UCC. Mine did not). Moreover law students have always read international legal opinions anyway - especially British legal opinions (and not just pre-Revolution ones).
Clearly, the law of your jurisdiction is always the binding authority. International formulations can be useful for interpreting your jurisdiction's law.
The Relativity class spends half the course on special relativity and half on general relativity, so yes MIT Physics students are learning general relativity in their sophomore year. The Standard Model is not taught in much depth in an undergraduate MIT physics (or any school) education because you need to get through at least 3 semesters of quantum mechanics before you can understand QCD and QED. We got only a brief introduction to it. Then usually senior year students are required to take either E&M 2 (8.07), Classical mechanics 2 (8.09), or Stat mechanics (8.08) as electives. If they want to go to grad school, they will try to take all of those. Then the rest of the electives a student might take would be in the area they are interested in: astrophysics, nanophysics, string theory, solid state physics, biophysics, plasma physics, particle physics, condensed matter physics, etc.
Obviously Physics is a huge field that people enter for different reasons. There are A LOT of things physics students should know but only so much time to teach it. The point of an undergrad physics education is to give them a solid understanding of the basics of the physics they will need after they graduate. Much of an undergraduate degree is spent getting classical and quantum mechanics down because that’s what students really need and it takes a lot of classes to do that. While general relativity is important, elegant, and interesting, only a budding astrophysicist really needs to know it so professors shouldn’t spend a whole semester on it.
What?! What for? He’s as oldbie as they come. O_o
That is the real kicker, there is no real difference between a planet and a moon. Nathan Zachary contradicts himself within his own argument. That is about as lame as you can get.
You sound just like the post modern liberals. As far as I’m concerned first year law students should learn about US law before venturing into foreign law, especially with the poor background in history that is common for today’s students.
I think that's an example of how we are becoming more materialistic and how the effects of that is leaking into our education system. I think with modernism/post modernism, fundamental truths are considered a waste of time. Science is just a search for facts and nothing else.
I think it boils down to refusing to suffer fools gladly.
That’s exactly what they are fighting about now, but since the cranes are on ships, it would require all ships coming into that port to have some kind of protection. Or, maybe just have the refinery buy their own crane and use that, instead of the ship’s crane.
The ship’s crane was running enough voltage to fry the meter that was left on it.
The alternative is the kind of circle !#%^ we see in the humanities. They say they are searching for 'fundamental truths', that's justification for anything.
Science is a search for explanations, not just facts. It's not surprising that explanations that lead to useful things are more attractive to scientists (and particularly applied scientists AKA Engineers).
To borrow from bible thumpers: 'by their fruits shall you judge them'. Science has been fruitful. Navel gazing has not.
Modernism has it's own set of 'fundamental truths' too bad they are basically BS (or at best trivial truths misapplied outside their domain). It would be nice if there was some way to test their process. Name one useful thing/thought to come out of * studies in the last 40 years. Their aren't any. Just a bunch of twits agreeing with each other.
There is no such thing as international law. There are treaties; but those exist because sovereign nations have made agreements with other nations into their local law. There is the law of other countries, which can be important for an attorney to understand. But there is no floating body of international common law--for one, there is noone to enforce it.
The creation of such is one of the great dreams of the left as they do not like American law.
That's certainly not true. It clearly exists, and every country on the face of the planet recognizes it. There are bilateral and multilateral treaties, but there is also the customary law of nations.
But there is no floating body of international common law--for one, there is noone to enforce it.
It is true that there is no (standing) international court to which one may go in the event of a breach of customary international law; even so, countries tend to get out of joint when customary international law is violated - and they will take matters into their own hands. Nuremberg firmly established that there are some transnational norms that, if violated, will result in some sort of personal liability.
Well you can’t expect much for only $40,000 a year (/s), which is not at all unusual today.
The entire education business is degraded by too much government involvement, which kills competition. All schools at all levels should be private, starting with K-12. Just eliminating K-12 would cut state and local taxes in half and put the money into the hands of education consumers, to choose private education. The Department of Education should be terminated, and free-market capitalism allowed to work it’s magic on education, just as it has on most of the stellar American economy.
Bad example. Victors have always imposed justice after a smashing defeat of an enemy. They have done so because, as a sovereign nation that just won a war, they have the power to do so in the form of boots on the ground with guns. Yes, we dressed up Nuremburg in rhetoric. But it was an exercise of raw, national power.
Did Mao or Stalin pay for their violation of "transnational norms" under international law? Has any monster of the left ever paid any price under international law? Of course not. The system for punishing monsters bears no resemblance to law.
Does this stuff come naturally to you, or do you practice at it?
Baldfaced lie -- you can't get an undergraduate degree without at least one semester of Classical Mechanics/Dynamics and a semester of Electromagnetism. Gravity and EM are the forces that control the universe -- the strong and weak forces (aside from allowing nuclear fusion) are almost irrelevent on the macroscopic scale.
Furthermore, you can't teach "real" General Relativity to an undergraduate student -- there is too much tensor math to do the work properly. You may touch on some of the concepts, but an actual course is too advanced.
Now, at the graduate level, I think a Ph.D. student should at least be exposed to General Relativity. A full course may be a bit much, but a few weeks as part of an EM or Math Methods course is OK.
Oh, and for the record I took Gravitational Astrophysics/General Relativity on the way to my Ph.D.
Why?
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