Comments on: The Core Ideas of Science

By: iolo system mechanic

iolo system mechanic — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:20:24 +0000

“I would love to see “waves” replaced by “fields” — a field is an entity which takes a value at every point in some space, while a wave is simply a ripple in a field.”

I agree 100% with that comment, however when people hear the term “fields” they probably think more about electric and magnetic fields and dont equate that with waves.

By: wds

wds — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:33:32 +0000

You specifically mention entropy and friction as not included, but isn’t entropy pretty fundamental to any introductory Chemistry class? Likewise for friction in mechanics. How do you explain why you need to peddle on a bike without using the concept of friction (for example)?

By: tim Rowledge

tim Rowledge — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 06:25:37 +0000

“Standardized testing is a good way to get rid of learning completely, if it’s done poorly. ”
And it is never, never done well.

It’s an example of what I’ve come to call the Benchmark Problem. It is very difficult to design good tests of performance, even with the best of intentions. People obsess on single values of merit – the 0-60 time of a car, the MegaWonderBenchmark figure for a new computer, the breast size of a porn star, or the results in a standardised school test. Single values never tell you much. Add in political or monetary pressures and you might as well forget it.
Schools end up teaching nothing but how to get a good score in a warped, pointless test. Car makers aim at meaningless acceleration regimes (midrange acceleration like 100-160 is more interesting) and on and in.
Meaningful measures are hard to find and hard to make good sense of and so nobody much even tries.

By: Barry

Barry — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 01:18:20 +0000

Sean,
Surely the key concept we should be pushing in Science education is 1. model/hypothesis making, 2. model/hypothesis testing 3. model/hypothesis changing? This is the essence of Science. The 4 ‘fields’ outlined above for physics are all well & good as ‘useful general chunks of physics’, but underpinning whatever your favorite field is should be: how do we think phenomenon X works, how do we test our model of how X works & depending on the results, how do we change our model?
That’s what we want to teach *every* kid. Every citizen should understand this stuff. It would eliminate much of the anti-science misunderstanding & BS in our societies. Science education in schools (US & European) is a hodge-podge of stuff drawn from all over, reliant on rote learning, with little thought given to context or the essential underlying principle: develop model, test model, alter model, repeat.

By: diogenes

diogenes — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:33:14 +0000

Anyone who thinks field theory should be taught to seventh graders hasn’t taught seventh graders, or probably anyone except grad students. Reminds me of the tremendous failure of the “new math” fad of the 60s and 70s.

By: Julien

Julien — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 18:20:54 +0000

No category devoted to the human sciences? No single topic devoted to economy and social psychology? Well… result of this kind of omission can be seen at the congress right now. Enjoy the next avoidable economic meltdown.

By: James

James — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 12:04:27 +0000

You went from waves to fields – fair enough – but as an example of a field you focused on temperature, which doesn’t really wave, rather it diffuses (Unless you meant heat waves, I suppose, but then still I would vote for seismic Love waves)

I would suggest that the important stuff for kids should be about concepts and ideas, but of course they need to be illustrated by examples. In maths, at about that age, we spent lots of time learning how to factorise quadratic equations, and how to find the inverse of a matrix. I can report that this has been of no use whatsoever in my adult life.

A useful thing would be an understanding of how to make decisions based on the tools that we have available: evidence and reason. Unfortunately an appreciation of how science works, and what a “proof” means, and statistics in general, is sadly lacking in my experience, and yet essential when people come to make up their minds about climate change, MMR vaccine safety, nuclear power, gay penguins, or whatever may be in the news at the time.

By: Brian

Brian — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 06:08:37 +0000

@Matt Strassler: Interesting — thanks for the response. I think I may have a slightly better understanding of fields now.

As for myself, I wish I had been taught field theory, period, at whatever point in my education.

By: Reginald Selkirk

Reginald Selkirk — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 17:48:47 +0000

I don’t know about this. I watched The Core and I do not consider it a good source of sound science.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:10:46 +0000

I bring to your attention Project 2061 and The National Science Education Standards. Bot of these are getting near their 20th birthday. Or might we consider the Woodshole Conference. Aside from small differences, conceptual ideas have been revisited far to often in what students need to learn. But there is where the trails end, since after that the discussion leads to how we summatively measure student knowledge and not how we successfully help students to learn these core concepts. There continues to be this call for standardized testing, but the most prominent standardized tests correlate more with socioeconomic background and parental education than with subject knowledge.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.147.7648&rep=rep1&type=pdf

I can’t find the source right now, but early IQ tests were written in the military such that whites would have a higher score than non- whites. The scores on these standardized tests were used for promotions.

In my education research I used standardized tests that have been studied and verified to not select out for any group but select for concepts. These are only part of the data I use. There a also observations, interviews, open- ended exercises, etc. And we never tell the instructor what or how to teach the concepts. We create an instrument that aligns with the core concepts that the teach believes she is teaching and we try to measu whethere the students are internalizing those concepts. In the end the best measurer of student learning is the teacher that works with these kids every day. That teacher knows how much the student has grown and how much they have internalized the ideas.

By the way, if you think about temperature as energy, which it is, then it is much easier and mire correct to treat temperature as a field and particles as information carriers for that field.

http://www.project2061.org/
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=4962

By: kirk

kirk — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:29:27 +0000

Good general outline but until this is an online curriculum (like California is attempting without much success now) this is just another dead tree textbook project. The other point is that a nation-wide curriculum (interactive, customized,…, open source) or a state curriculum like Texas – teh crazies will never, never, never stop until they have a majority on the SBOE and the USBOE and unring the bell.

By: spyder

spyder — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 01:23:32 +0000

Perhaps before we leap directly into the schools, we might consider demanding these standardized outcomes in our teacher education curricula. Reform must begin in the graduate programs that prepare our future teachers. Continuing education is a wonderful concept, but it doesn’t provide the deep foundation that a potent science education curriculum could provide. Remembering a few weeks back, the discussion on non-academic jobs for physics graduate students, encouraging some of these finest minds to enter into the k-12 teaching worlds may be more helpful than imagined.

By: Fermi-Walker Public Transport

Fermi-Walker Public Transport — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 01:08:52 +0000

Speaking of waves/fields, I heard that there is at least one first year university course
for physics students that reverses the usual order of topics. That is it begins teaching about waves , then E&M, next comes the usual topics of particle kinematics and dynamics, and finally concluding with wave-particle duality and the rest of modern physics. I forgot where this done. Does anyone know where, and how successful the approach has been ?

By: Matt Strassler

Matt Strassler — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:21:06 +0000

@Brian — you said “I think of temperature as more of an emergent property of particles taken en masse. From that perspective, it seems like you could only treat temperature as a field if you don’t look too closely.”

But that’s true of lots of things. Sound waves in air or in metals — waves on a string or in the ocean — these are all very effectively understood using field theory. Yet not one of those fields is truly continuous; each is an emergent phenomenon. It is often wise not to “look too closely”– one should look only as closely as necessary and useful. This’ is a powerful lesson of modern science, and it too could be taught in 7th grade.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 23:23:12 +0000

@Tom:

Standardized testing is a good way to get rid of learning completely, if it’s done poorly. You need to teach concepts, not how to perform well on a test.

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 23:04:34 +0000

A “field” is just a function; i.e., something that has a value at every point. In the atmosphere, there is a temperature at every point; therefore, temperature is a field. Likewise the velocity of the air. Or humidity, pressure, etc. On the surface of the earth, there is a number called the “altitude” at every point; that is also a field. Likewise the height of water in the oceans. If the ocean-height field oscillates in a certain way, we call that a “wave.”

By: AJKamper

AJKamper — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:37:48 +0000

As someone else who was not taught this at all… explain, please, how temperature or velocity could be a field.

Thanks in advance.

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:27:42 +0000

You only think that because you weren’t taught it in seventh grade.

By: Hephaestus

Hephaestus — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:23:59 +0000

Only a field theorist would say that defining temperature and velocity as fields is not intrinsically complicated and should be taught to seventh graders.

By: Jochen

Jochen — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:58:03 +0000

The core idea of science is to find out the truth. Albert Einstein said “Meine wissenschaftliche Arbeit wird durch ein unwiderstehliches Verlangen vorangetrieben, die Geheimnisse der Natur zu verstehen, und durch nichts sonst (My scientific work is motivated by an irresistible desire to understand the secrets of nature – by nothing else)”.