sci.research.careers

In article < @ >, morrisjcroy@ wrote:
>> I guess I've heard of the physics first movement but hadn't
>> paid any attention. Despite my background in physics, I think
>> that's a silly idea for high school curriculum. One can't
>> understand cellular level processes with the level of physics
>> one learns in high school. One doesn't master quantum mechanics
>> in high school physics and even if one did, high school chemistry
>> doesn't use it (much beyond the idea of electon shells defining
>> the relationships in the periodic table). I don't know why
>> anyone who has been through these subjects in high school and
>> college would even come up with the idea of taking high school
>> physics before biology or chemistry in order to help learn those
>> subjects.
>
>Programs like "new math" and "physics first" seem to be like putting
>the cart before the horse.
>
>Before I ever took the junior year high school physics course, various
>topics from physics were covered in the general science courses like:
>
>- velocity in 1-dim
>- simple work calculations (ie. work = force x distance)
>- concave + convex lenses and mirrors
>- simple circuits, Ohm's law

What class that is not physics would have covered Ohm's law?
And WHY??? I feel that this sort of crap is responsible for
the fact that easily 9 out 10 graduate students I've met did not
understand Ohm's law. One guy in the lab right now (he's going
to get a . in few months) calls farads "voltage" and does
not distinguish between electric potential, difference of potentials,
and electric field intensity. (This is "modern biology" we are
talking about; in a top 10 public university, no less).

>Most of them were either mostly experimental and/or the math was
>relatively simple. Covering something like Newton's 2nd law,
>diffraction, interference, etc ... would be largely pointless at
>earlier grades.

Covering diffraction and interference in high school at all is
utterly stupid and pointless anyway.

DK