Problems with High School Physics - Sixty Symbols
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- čas přidán 10. 11. 2012
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Sixty Symbols regulars Ed Copeland, Tony Padilla and Phil Moriarty discuss their personal views on high school physics education in the UK.
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My high school physics teacher actually started out the class this year by stating "physics is a math class disguised as science".
I would've done much better in school if they labeled "Math" as "Science" and actually taught scientific algebra instead of just standard algebra which churns out numbers with no significant meaning (well from a personal perspective they had no meaning)
***** yeah, I think that the best approach is to meld the two subjects into one super subject. As Galileo said- "Math is the language with which God has chosen to write the universe"
@@micheals1992 ‘standard’ algebra lays the groundwork that's required to understand and manipulate more advanced math like conic sections (circles, parabolas, ellipses), and especially calculus
@@kurtronqx7135 you’re not told that in high school math
@@skat3r430 not told what? Conic circles? I learned that in grade 12 calculus.
Doing maths in physics was much easier than the actual subject. Giving the maths a meaning helped so much. It's not the physics that's the problem in my opinion, it's the way maths is taught.
i agree
so true. derivatives, integrals, and differential equations makes much more sense in when applied to physics
i think its the way the relation between physics and maths is taught
No , its not true. The only way to do math is by using your brain and writing down ecuation , doing math things . Its not like any other disclipine where you can applie a phisical , moral , or sentimental notion. Even pshihology , where you use your brain very hard its sometimes about the moral or human stuff. While math its the ultimate thing , you simply cannot use a trick or relay on an emotion or a moral trait , because math its on point . You simply cannot use the ecuation x-2=4 by appealing to nothing else that math itself.
+Mike D ???
I think students at school level should be taught about the importance of modern science. Most of the general public doesn't really understand the need for funding in science. So even if we can't teach them the actual intricacies of physics at least they'll know WHY is it important to study this stuff.
+Aniruddha YES!
Just got to point out that this is already taught on the GCSE Physics Syllabus for many of the exam boards.
Aniruddha yes definitely. We do live in the age of science, the only problem is that most people don't know we do.
The things on the whiteboard scare me, but then I think for a second and realise how much I want to learn and understand it.
Thats a beautiful attitude
although I always will criticize my outdated Indian Teaching system to the end, I have to give credit to it for the way it presents Physics in grade 11 and 12 (basically a-level) which is great! It has all the "scary" math and calculus parts but it makes it all less scary and more fun by making us DERIVE all the physics equations before making us work on them.
it not only eliminates the need to memorize countless formulae, but it also gives us a deep intuition behind them, making us think the way scientists who developed those formulae did.
A-level physics and US Physics of the same level is very dull, by comparison, imo. But apart from that, they're still better
yes!! I love it when you actually learn how the equations are derived! it brings out the meaning rather than just memorise and use this in this situation (bleh) but the problem is that sometimes hard to explain without explaining a million other things first
Aniruddha N
Oh. Did I forget to mention the pointless ban on calculators?
PS. My message is just what came out of me due to my frustration dealing with CBSE and I have nothing personal against you. Please excuse me if I sounded rude or harsh in any part of my message. ^^
Aniruddha N
True. This rote learning process is a simple route to high marks and most students do that. Our society values rote-learnt marks instead of innovation and ideas. Which is what's holding +1bn brilliant Indians behind.
Oh yes. CBSE had banned calculators since time immemorial. To make matters even worse, two years ago, they even omitted that lesson that teaches us how log tables are used. XD
There's basically 0 co-ordination b/w Math and other subjects. In Comp Sc and Physics, a ot of MAth concepts are required which they didn't teach us until a year later. smh XD
The value of a method od education can't be decided by a bunch of smartass 60+ year old professors sitting in a distant room in Delhi years behind actual progress, but by the customers of this business (i.e. the students themselves). I wonder when will India ever recognize this.
+Mohammed Zaid I agree. One of teh first things we were taught was how to derive formulae from basic ones. Also if you remember, we do imaginary numbers right back in school. Also, because we were awarded marks on the basis of steps of equation, it really made us able to sit and just write complex equations at length, not just match the following or fill in the blanks. The problem is in the way things are taught in India, and not what is taught.
Hi!
I'm an Indian student too, just gave my boards and I couldn't agree with you more, about the way in which science is presented. Now, since you seem to have an idea of how it should be done, could you recommend me a physics book which is rigorous in it's approach? (background: I've read fundamentals of physics till the modern physics part and I have a firm grasp on the basics. at least that's what I'd like to believe)
or should I just study calculus so that I'm able to study physics in the "right" way, that is, with mathematical rigor.
It's unfortunately all too true. Until I developed an interest in physics, I recall that I quite frankly didn't care for mathematics.
Oh, I could learn it ok, do some problems, etc., but at least partially due to American culture, I did not see the beauty in it, nor the intricacy with which math is intertwined with reality and how necessary it truly is.
What I am hearing is ...YOU know there is more to MATH, PHYSICS, etc... 1 I support y OLD saying..CREATIVITY is more valuable than knowledge. As you are experiencing....that know is very old....which raises the ?? Why is there not any NEW stuff!!! I did tell people how they can go about getting NEW data. Energy is in a fraction 90/10..10% of energy breaks all laws reason... to master that last 10% is ENORMOUS....It would trillions upon trillions of life times to thoroughly understand energy that is NOT governed by any energy foundation laws. I LIKE HENRY guy... he seems like some whom I have had one on one teaching in my past lives. A++++
QUANTUM PHYSICS is child's play compare to 10% PHYSICS [ADVANCE OF ALL ENERGY "PHYSICS" which comes in 3 stages which requires a person being able to use a higher % of his brain complicity...20% and higher]. 10% does not sound like much but let me tell you... you will spend 1,000,000 more effort into that last 10% than what it take to master the first 90% of energies PHYSICS...
Everett Pierce
Strawman much? I only said that maths and physics have underlying elegance and beauty, and our current education system prevents many a youth from discerning this.
You're going on an unrelated tangent I really do not care to adress.
*****
That may be so, but I'm a very biased, faliable human being, and thus my greatest sympathies lie with the physical and mathematical sciences, with biology and anthropology as runners up.
*****
Neither do I, but I'm trying, and hopefully I'll be able to fully understand at least some bits of it some day.
5:37 - From the entire video this is what I appreciated the most. It's an incentive to students who are just entering university and haven't seen yet some of the beautiful but difficult concepts involving physics and mathematics.
7:12 Never go full Daily Mail. Never.
I'm a little annoyed that Phil didn't go into the higher tier papers and the last questions. The foundation paper is designed for people who cannot understand physics and will not go into college to learn physics let alone university. It's just a legal requirement to of taken science at GCSE.
I know what you mean I'm from Germany and my I had Physics as a "grundkurs"( only 3hours a week don't have to write test if you haven't chosen it as part of your Abitur) and maths as a "Leistungskurs"(the important stuff with five hours a week is more important for your final grade and so on)
and our physics teacher tried to keep it possible for everybody since it was only a grundkurs so you might not want to do physics but you just needed a science.
The thing was that even so we did more maths as we did in Maths itself despite Maths being for people who actually wanted to do something with maths.
The way that my university handled the problem was a maths course that you could take before you started studying were you learn such things as complex numbers and all the other stuff that we didn't learn in school but should have
Thank you. I can't see any reason why you'd advocate for forcing everyone to gain a deep understanding of physics, even when it's blindingly obvious that they will not do anything remotely to do with it in the future. Making a standard qualification that everyone is forced to do reasonably basic is definitely, from my perspective, a step in the right direction
Alec Mileman exactly this. first questions in foundation is the easiest as well, the paper goes in order of difficulty.
Yes, comparing Foundation Tier with O-Level is not fair.
The old CSE may be much closer to Foundation tier GCSE..
Higher Tier vs. O-Level would be fairer.
Alec Mileman Tbf though even the higher papers on triple science are ridiculously easy
This is incredible. Thank you. I am in high school in the US and my school is not allowing us to have AP Physics C. 6 student, including myself, are fighting to have the class, but the school will have none of it. Thank you for showing us that we aren't crazy for wanting a higher level physics course. Especially since we are going to college in a year.
'if you're prepared to do it, you're going to be fine'
thank you for saying that. encouraged me a lot.
You guys do a great job at incorporating the content in a useful and succinct way. Love the style of these!
This is why 90% of the Math and Physics students are now exchange students from abroad - from countries which still understand the importance of math instead of ridiculing it.
Also people like money and not starving. If India had USA money and Scandinavian healthcare , you can be sure most of the most white american scientists would exchange the cold and mass shootings with sunny weather and exotic yummy food.
This maybe true for the US which ranks extremely low in standardized testing especially math
@@moonraker8794 but US has the best universities out there
Phenomenal Physics yes but most of the students are either Indian,Chinese,or some other ethnicity but definitely not American. Most of the students are essentially from abroad.
@@dhruvkumarjiguda5415 This is false, international students make up only like 6% of the student population in the US. You assume that most high achievers are foreign due to availability bias, as in you've heard of mostly students from your country or similar that have gone to the US. There are extremely intelligent students in the US but the majority are below the level of other countries in math.
The biggest reason people have a problem with maths in the context of physics is it is not often enough taught in concert with the theory. Comming from a background in engineering and taking a something like Fourier analysis I tried to understand it many times and failed until the theory as to how and why it worked was explained and how it works to give the result. Most people cannot fully understand maths as an abstract idea. One of my favourite units of study was physics and I blitzed the maths in it even though in general it's my weakest subject because we were lead to understand the maths befire we applied it, it was given meaning.
Our teacher never explains the logic behind the formulas 😞
I felt after I graduated, that science and math were separate subjects, as they never mixed until college.
science and maths ARE separate subjects, though - it just so happens that science is by far the largest consumer of maths, and sort of feeds back into it, kind of like how apple's work on llvm and webkit feeds back into the open source community.
ok that simile probably wasn't the best.
But it isn't the worst, either! (Not by a long chalk.)
I'm currently in my first year of physics of my undergraduate degree, and although we do see and use basic calculus and other fundamental maths theories, I have a completely separate module to learn all the maths theories like matrix transformations, eigen values, fourier series, complex numbers, converging and diverging series. And there is not a single point in any of the lectures where they relate it something in physics unless a student puts their hand up and asks "what is the point of this?" and their response is normally "its very useful in quantum mechanics" without actually specifying what.
I agree with the sentiments at 5:34. Actually, I think the GCSE standards ought to go up too. In GCSE maths, you spend months finding gradients of curves by drawing tangents on graph paper and then measuring the change in height by change in length. And finding areas under curves by summing trapeziums together. If I recall correctly, not once did we even discuss the possibility of making those trapeziums infinitessimally narrow or taking any limits, or anything resembling calculus. Certainly at higher tier GCSE, there ought to be a basic introduction to differentiation and integration. Then that gives you much more scope to introduce more mathematical rigour into the Physics A-level syllabus.
Professor Padilla's notes show why he's such a wonderful physicist!
Leo
The fact that he hates them shows that he's even better than you think.
He should be concerned with the way that everything is taught in highschool in America
+Marty Mcfly You cannot even call that education, what you have over there. :/
19midnightsun87 Couldn't agree with you more.
+Marty Mcfly And yet, somehow, it still produces the most Nobel prize winners, across all disciplines... "The American Paradox". has now been officially coined, here and now. Zeno was an amateur...:)
+Benjamin Dover Pretty obvious reason why, I can't see how it's not immediately obvious to anyone. It's a big country. You may aswell say Europe has the most Nobel laureates if you're going to judge it by that ridiculous metric. You're answering this the same as someone asking "how can you melt steel?" and you say "throw it in the ocean" rather than put it in a smelting furnace, since the ocean is hotter than a smelting furnace as it's much larger.
Nobel prizes per capita would be a much more reasonable way to judge the education of a country, excluding very very small countries since there isn't enough data to get reasonable data on Nobel prizes per capita, of which the US most certainly is not even close to a world leader.
I went to a private high school in the US and my science teachers were phenomenal. My Chemistry teacher actually had a PhD and my Physics teacher was a mechanical engineer for 15 years. One thing that I thought was interesting though, in Physics we learned about things solely on a macro scale stressing the work of scientists like Newton, Faraday, and Einstein. While in Chemistry we actually learned a lot of physics, but it was on the micro scale learning about Bohr, Schrodinger, and Heisenberg.
Do they teach quantum mechanics and general relativity separately like this in Europe?
You changed my life and the way I look at world. Thank you!
I agree so much. Personally, I will never be a physicist or a mathematician - I’m studying classical music. But with some understanding of the fundamentals of these studies, it opens up a whole new world of my field. Once I began to really understand the sciences behind music, it not only made it so much easier to understand, but it made everything so much more beautiful and I developed such a sense of love and wonder for the way our universe works. And then sometimes I have a Musicianship exam in 8 hours and I’m watching a Sixty Symbols video from several years ago.
This video has just made me even more excited about starting AQA's AS Physics course in September.
A level physics has become hard for me because I favour maths and the amount of maths in the course has been reduced
Exactly
If I was introduced to even the general idea of things like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle or Schrodinger's cat back in in elementary or highschool, I'm sure I would've taken an interest much earlier and actually taken math and physics in highschool. But it was as if they picked out all the fascinating parts of the topics and left in everything sure to put off 90% of students. Maybe it's different now; my 12 year old sister is learning about the structure of atoms and the wavelike properties of electrons, so already it seems much more exciting and less dry than much of what we did.
I’m glad I go to an extra physics class which does everything much more in-depth. Once you construct the theories from the basic mathematical principles everything becomes much clearer, it all flows much nicer even though I’ve had to self-teach a lot of the maths I need for the course.
Ty everyone. This raises many interesting, important and difficult questions about differences between secondary and tertiary education, the way maths is seen in the world and how some schools seem to make students think that school is the end and not letter 'A' of 26!
50% of my first year lectures were maths. In the first two weeks or so we were all brought up to speed on things like partial differentials and vector spaces and then off we went. By Christmas we were deriving orthonormal polynomials as solutions to partial differential equations. Then it was contour integration, and starting in on Green's, Gauss's and Stokes's theorems. It was pretty brutal. Second year QM was even worse.
Found my love for math and science only after high school, would've been an honour to study at this university.
6:06 so true. I've had to discipline myself to self study because I had so many knowledge gaps in mathematics but once you feel in those gaps, especially by yourself, you feel like you can take on the world
+Lester Sanchez This is wierd. I thought the maths part was the easy one and other stuff was not so intuitive easy. I guess others see it differently.
I believe it is paramount to have a solid understanding of the basics of physics (the old stuff, which isn't boring at all in my opinion) because physics is a subject based on inductive reasoning (this is my personal belief); It builds on the older theorems and points out each and every time through experiments which parts of the older theorems were wrong and how to improve our ideas of the perceicable world.
Even people in my AS Further Maths seem to be this way of feeling it's unimportant to not be able to understand maths so I would definitely agree that there is an underlying problem with how mathematics is viewed in general. For physics in particular, I would say that about 50% of my class would completely switch off when 'hard' maths came up.
I remember my first fluid mechanics lecture it made me depressed, I think first lecture should make you feel interested, but not depressed!
5:40-6:15 Holy cow, my year in physics, described perfectly.
Being out of high school for a few years and not yet to a university, I expected to be bothered by the discussion in the video. However I could not agree more! Every day in school, there would be people complaining about math and science. The strong subjects were always history or English, however I was one of the top 3 students in my Algebra classes. I would always be asked "How can you put that much effort into something so boring?" and I would retaliate with "How can you find the fundamental properties of everything in our daily lives 'boring'?"
I absolutely LOVED learning about what defines our world. Not knowing how something works gets under my skin as I'm a very curious person. I'm not great with math by any means - I do believe I just got lucky in school. But my interest in the topic drives me to learn more and hopefully be in the position the great people in these videos are in!
Can't agree more. I remember taking chem in college, thinking the Bohr model was THE model of atoms. I had never heard of wave functions, and frankly it confused the heck out of me. I can remember being so frustrated because i am a science-minded kind of guy, and should not have been having so much difficulty at a concept in a 100 level course. Of course, it wasn't the fact that it was truly complicated, it was just the fact i was trying to not only absorb and understand the actual purpose of the lecture, but on top of that, also re-imagine the entire structure of atoms at the same time. Add to that the lack of math at the primary level, which also has to then be incorporated into the college level courses as though they go hand in hand (because they DO - we're just not taught that until it is almost too late).
The Shakespeare example is perfect - i may not be an expert on Shakespeare, but i've read most of his plays, understand the contribution he made to literature, and thoroughly enjoy his stuff. I may not be able to explain in detail WHY his plays were so special, but i do know know them and have gained an appreciation for his work. Why is science and math treated differently?
I liked the Shakespeare bit too. I had to read so much rubbish in high school because someone thought it was important. Learning how my car worked would've been a better use of my time.
If you ask any esteemed and well engaged person if their particular subject of interest or profession should be taught more in school and understood by everyone, presumably they will say yes because of their cognitive biases. Should physics be more in depth for everyone? I would say no; not without their consent at least. It's not that it isn't important, but it shouldn't be monopolized for people's way of thinking - and by extension - no one subject ever should be. You get to a point where you're trying to shove a square into a triangle shaped hole. Diversity is a quality of humans, so some people may not like physics. Physics (or any other subject) ARE IMPORTANT, but in conjunction with every other one. We need people to be best at what they are best at, and should allow them the materials to explore what that may be; instead of us trying to be the Thought Police
Maryam Abkar Yeah that makes sense. What's funny is that I really enjoy physics more than other subjects, I was just going through some angry thought process at the time. Of course it's my contention that the whole education process is flawed, physics or not, and is need of serious changing from how archaic it is. Much like you're saying about physics, the entirety of education is stuck in an older time that doesn't cope with the demands of today
By learning loads of equations just given to you, VUSAT style. (For anyone unaware, VUSAT is a mnemonic for mechanics under constant acceleration: v=u+at, v²=u²+2as, s=ut+0.5at², etc. At the start of A-level applied maths you're generally taught all these with no idea of calculus, followed by a quick mention of the differential equations, when it's pretty much easier to derive them from just a = a constant and differentiation).
My high school teacher was an older guy, 75 or so. He was a former NASA scientist and university lecturer, and retired to high school in order to keep his brain active on a daily basis. He was a great teacher.
As someone currently studying physics I've gotta say I really like the balance of what is taught, my biggest issue being how they balance content between AS and A2 making a lot of the harder bigger stuff crammed together in A2 meaning AS is like a cakewalk of well understood concepts that carry from GCSE and A2 seems to be a bombardment loads and loads of new stuff we may never get to fully appreciate. Lucky enought to have two fantastic physics teachers tho so :)
Jennifer11963 , I found your comment very interesting. I don't start high school for another year and the one thing I was most excited for was a chance to actually be taught physics face-to-face with someone. I adore minute physics and pretty much anything to do with physics and astronomy, but now, I'm a bit disappointed in what I've heard. I just hope that I will have classmates like you and teachers like yours in high school.
I taught Signal Processing at a well respected university in England, as part of an Elec. Eng. degree course, for a 3 years around 1990. In those 3 years we had to shift our emphasis for 1st year students to become more and more about remedial maths than the subject itself.
Ed mentioned self education. Channels like yours are very useful if you fall behind on some subject in school. I would like more videos like these
i would just like to point out that that gcse paper is foundation and in a foundation you can only get a grade C highest. that question is probably a grade E/F so not even near any level of understanding that would be required for a Standard Level Physics course. If you have look at a A* question you will be asked to re arrange a formula and solve it. For example we had to rear arrange speed=frequency*wavelength to get the frequency instead of the speed. This is about as hard as it gets in GCSE. I personally would really like to see more quantum theory (even if it involves no maths) and maths in GCSE science but then I have tried to explain schrodinger's cat theory to someone else who is dong GCSE Physics and they just thought i was mad.
BTW I am currently doing GCSE triple science (Biology, Chemistry and Physics)
Math is THE REASON I love physics. I was really disappointed that I couldn't skip to AP because AP requires you to be in a more advanced math class. I was doing AP physics homework in 8th grade because almost nobody in the actual class was smart enough to solve a quadratic. Also, when I was doing not-AP physics, I was getting problems wrong for applying Theory of Relativity. 1 more thing... from what I've heard about the AP physics class that uses calculus, I could have slept through that class using only the few calculus equations that I learned from the Internet. So, in my opinion, there really needs to be a better way to determine whether someone is ready for AP and there needs to be classes in high school for Quantum Physics and Theory of Relativity stuff.
Ok... As a refresher: AP-anything is only available in high school: grades 9 and up; exactly for the reason mentioned. Trigonometry after geometry and calculus after whatever math lays down the basics...
I also love Physics because of the Mathematics involved. I developed a habit during my high school to describe everything with numbers, variables and equations.
That worked well when I eventually started my journey in Physics. For me Physics is Mathematics, but even more interesting.
I just realise, i don't know what "would I be " without your videos!! keeeeeep on! congratulations
My physics teacher last year had a masters degree in literature. It was the last week before finals when she finally properly explained what the force normal on an object was, after we had several tests with the concept. American education rocks.
Absolutely, totally agree with this entire video, especially towards the end. I took GCSE physics and am taking A level in a few months and I have definitely noticed that these courses have a minimalist amount of actual physics in them! As the video displayed, it's all basic knowledge on electrical circuits or power stations etc and there seems to be no fundamental, new elements of physics within these courses (like quantum mechanics). With no disrespect whatsoever, I really think that exam boards need to apply a more realistic representation of physics within their courses.
GCSEs in general are far too easy. Also A level maths is pretty easy - it wasnt that uncommon for people to get 90%+ all the time. People are so obsessed with getting the grades that teachers teach you how to pass the exam rather than learning the content.
Easy? A Level Maths? _EASY?_
@@hopesy12u4 I suppose things change after 5 years? It's pretty hard but not hard enough to fail.
This was an issue that I had on coming to university to study Engineering. There was such a learning curve with the maths that I struggled severely.
I am a soon to graduate Mathematics Major at Oregon State, here in the States, and I will be teaching Pre-Cal, Calculus, and Physics in 2015. My biggest problem with High School Physics right now is the fact it is too much info in too short of a time period, roughly 15 weeks.
I found that in High School it is important to let the students learn the basics for their first years in Physics in a University. Therefore i have been planning lectures and work sheets to help understand Kinetics and Rotation, then once that is understood go onto more abstract things such as Quantum and Relativity.
Come to Asia :D
My high school physics teacher showed us that minutephysics video the other day and started talking about second year physics concepts (I'm in my first year) and you could tell how much more excited he was to talk about those things than he normally is when he talks about basic physics (pre-1865). It was also probably one of the most interesting physics classes we've had (although I may be a bit biased because I'm probably the only one there who knew, and loves, minutephysics and already understand some of these concepts). The basics are necessary, but I think it's important to bring up these concepts such as quantum mechanics, the higgs boson, and relativity to show that physics is a combination of math and concepts, and that the difference between physics and a normal math class, such as calculus, is that it is applicable to things happening around us (well, some of them) and that it has another factor that makes it more interesting and astonishing.
Also, I think this was a great video, and it definitely made me question how physics is taught and it made me even more excited to learn the higher level physics concepts and math. :)
I did my GCSEs in '97 and I took A-Level physics and maths. The Physics course taught the equations, and how they were derived, but the underlying math was taught in the math course. This caused issues when the math needed hadn't yet been taught as it was later in the syllabus.
In middle school i loved science but just didn't like physics, in my just completed last year of high school I have found that physics became more engaging and rewarding funnily enough when i sat myself down and forced myself to understand. Once the concepts are understood the further applications (once daunting) make a lot of sense. Thanks for the video regardless of how late i am to the show :)
What no teacher would ever explain to me is what I could do with any of this information. I have no problem doing the basic operations of math, but the explanations are almost non-existent.
Just a small example is the square root. I was shown a check mark thing and some crazy bits of math that I did without understanding why. But one thing that was never pointed out was that you could actually make a square by stacking the roots up. Someone could have just shown me a drawing of a square grid at least one time and said, "Hey, this is actually why we call these numbers square or cubed."
I had to learn that little tidbit far later.
Teachers, and adults in general, tend to forget that what's obvious to them is not obvious in the limited experience of a child and that none of those kids have even had the same education for the most part.
And let's not forget that most teachers just want you to shut up and read the book.
*On a side note, I'm curious if there is a way to convert one form of math to another, such as a quadratic equation into geometry. I'm a very visual learner, which is the whole reason I'm looking at math, which I admittedly have very poor skill in.
"And let's not forget that most teachers just want you to shut up and read the book."
A very unfair generalization, maybe you just had bad teachers.
It may be a generalization, but one that holds true with my experiences of school. Many hundreds of hours listening to a clock tick.
Whenever I would move to a new state, about every year and a half, the new school would be on a different book, or the book I had worked from the year before. So I would end up repeating the same thing, or be a year behind and lost, with either a teacher who didn't teach or one without the few minutes it would take to understand my situation.
I'm not directing my ire at all teachers, but the vast majority who sat in a room with me all year long and still needed to check a chart for my name.
The bad teachers ignored my raised hand until my bladder gave in, or threw me into walls. Lucky for me, I had a couple more good ones than bad, but I got a first hand view of what's wrong with the system and how far spread it is.
None of that matters, I spent five years being shoved the same per-algebra book, and was denied help for any of it the whole time, so I still rather suck at math.
Mike Young You're from the US? Ah I understand your point now because the education system at the high school level in the US is very poor.
I assumed you were from the UK.
Hahaha! That's so sad, but hysterically funny at the same time!
_"Just a small example is the square root"_
You called me?
As a current A-level student I also find the lack of maths within physics disturbing. I take both maths and physics and often find connections between the two, however when these things are taught in physics, you are taught a lot of facts and never told where they come from, especially in centripetal motion. It's like they are trying to not use maths at all! For example: instead of using trapezium rule or integration for the area under some curves we have been told to "count squares". WHO IS GOING TO SIT AND COUNT SQUARES ON AN EXAM? We need to be taught some A-level maths as part of a physics syllabus mainly because as it says in the video "Maths is the language of physics". if we don't understand the language, how are we meant to understand the syntax?
It's been many years since high school physics for me, but when I was in school I did my best to complete every advanced math & science course I could as quickly as possible. Taking calculus was not possible until the year after physics.
As a high school student who is currently taking both AP physics course I agree to some extent with the physics curriculum. The problem is that there is so much physics to cover; however, although I would be interested in learning more intricate parts of quantum theory and Brownian movement but from a practical perspective, a high school teacher will rarely have enough students in his or her class who are genuinely interested in quantum physics
the teacher doesn't explain the use for the formula, they say to you to do, you have no idea how to link the formulas to use in the useful way. You have a N number of formulas and only knows what to do individualy, and if you have a problem thats have to use more than one formula you are screwed.
There are some problems in the arguments put forward in this video.
For one, whilst calculus may be non-existent in the A-Level Physics syllabus, it IS in the Maths syllabus, which most Physics students also study.
Also, multiple choice questions tend to exist only in the foundation tier in GCSE science, on which no grade higher than a C is obtainable. Practically all colleges/sixth forms require you to get at least a B at GCSE to continue a subject through to A-Level, especially in scientific subjects. It's highly unlikely that someone doing foundation level science at GCSE is going to study science at university.
However, with all of that said, I do believe that education of science towards the general public needs to improve, especially new science. However, as people like Professor Brian Cox (and in fact CZcams channels such as this) try to show us, the answer may lie in media rather than the education system (which I do in fact agree could be improved).
dude application of calculus in physics is very different from that in mathematics!!!
It depends upon your teacher and how you learn it.
it depends on u only.
Completely disagree with the calculus part. I've just finished my physics degree having done A levels here in New Zealand. I found calculus extremely simple in maths, but when translated into physics it changes completely, mainly due to the fact that the calculus used in physics is vector calculus. It is more in depth, required a complete understanding of the fundamental theorem of calculus and caught me and many others completely of guard. Nonetheless spend a bit of time on it and it comes together, but it would have been nice to learn a bit of vector analysis and linear algebra in high school instead of op-amplifiers and some of the other junk I learnt in A-level physics.
calculus is easy till u deal with the easy part . calculus merges with many topics of mathematics from complex numbers to vectors. to understand physics u need to get the feel of it at least in classical physics. as we go further in physics and mathematics , the line between the two starts thinning. mathematics is mostly developed , not for a certain purpose, but physics is studied and developed with a certain purpose.
my transition to the original physics was nice when i learnt a bit of calculus , now i enjoy these equations a lot , the fact that an equation can give us results without doing experiments really nice , i guess it just depends on the proffesor to make physics equations understandable and enjoyable
Thinking back to my High School experience in Australia, a lot of the maths was taught. Complex numbers and fairly involved calculus weren't new to me when I got to University.
Okay, so here is a suggestion to you folks at Nottingham-include math in your videos. I know you have Numberphile, but should you add some of your proofs and mathematical justifications, even if we the viewing public don't entirely understand them, our exposure to the maths would be benefical. Remember, most of us coming to these videos are here out of a sense of curiosity, love of learning, and a strong interest in the subject matter, but for one reason or another were unable to pursue our passions further. I want to be challenged. I want to be reminded of that which I have forgotten.
James Estrada and maybe explaining little parts of it might help and make us see that it's not as scary
Anna Banana
Oh it only gets much more scary...
Today half of the class was just moaning or chuckling after one hour of basic maths for the physics course. I don't think anyone understood what was being said by the end of the lecture.
The way math is taught has been an issue (at least in my experience). When I was in high school, physics courses were too basic to expose the use of real math, and math teacher failed to link their lessons to their usefullness in physics. The level of math in high school is far, far from being high enough to be in some sort of abstraction from physics problems that could illustrate their use. At high school level you won't lose any mathematician if you link the math notion to physics, but you will lose potential physicists because you can't get them to cope with math if its decorelated from anything concrete.
I'm so glad I've picked Maths and Further Maths along with Physics for the A levels I will be starting later this year :)
I've just finished high school and I'm going on to A-Level Physics. I was interested in physics and so did a lot of learning outside of the classroom. I was shocked at the simple lies that we were told when are slightly more accurate explanation of a theory would have taken a few more seconds
I agree with Tony, if I have to understand the music of the Renascence when I'm getting a degree in Animal Biology, people getting a Music degree should have to understand basic biology. But no, I have to take a course about music from 1500-1900, and they will never have to know why the mathematics of evolution is so ridiculously simple that it would be more extraordinary if it weren't happening.
fakjbf What are you talking about? Who values music history over science? You are the first person to feel that way.
Square Root the people setting the requirements
I think the "liberal arts" paradigm of education is steadily becoming obsolete. Education is long-since no longer a luxury. In a very short period of time, we have gone from education, even literacy, being largely limited to the upper classes, to the point where illiteracy or the total absence of education in an individual is extremely rare. I think education needs to become more specialized and planned around the potentials of individual students. People tend to excel in what they are most interested in, and we would do well to figure out where people would be most useful from as young of an age as possible, for their sake and society at large.
People say Maths isn't cool...yet they use mobile phones, laptops and the internet..which rely on Mathematics in order to be created.
I guess people nowadays simply don't know the benefits behind Mathematics.
To be fair, it's like saying mining isn't cool yet we still use grills: yes, it's useful but i don't care.
I do enjoy math and believe it's important but wrong argument.
No one says maths isn't cool
@@50p35 Unfortunately......
I realized 3 people commented on a 4 year old comment within 2 days and none before
Gagan Surathkal lol
You guys are awesome, i am doing the International Baccalaureate with physics, i am taking it at higher level which is just harder than AS and A2 Physics combined, the amount of math we are doing i can do, i struggle at times, but i carry on. When i talk to most people in my math class (this math class isn't hard, i have done the paper and knew most of the stuff without doing the 2 years of study for it). They all just take a look at it and push it away. The problem isn't physics but with math.
6:05 is about how I felt starting Calculus 1 at my university. I had no clue what a derivative was or what it was used for.
you picked P1 the easiest physic paper you will ever get this is for those schools who need a science gcse for their students
The difficulty of GCSE and Alevel will be increased in the future years, so good luck, my fellow students :D
i studied physics and maths at alevel, i enjoyed physics (thoroughly) but the maths.. a part of me would literally shrivel everytime i walked into class but it did help me with physics. they go hand in hand
@subparanon aluminium is because it fits in line with how other elements are spelt. Sodium etc.
I just graduated from high school and I just found out how much basic mathematics I lack because of the sick system 😑 .
OMAr -kun same here. :(
I would love to be able to just sit and talk with someone about this stuff. People I know quickly flee from the room when I attempt to speak with them about these things.
Thanks for letting me know!
Archimedes principles is such a simple concept that explains even quantum mechanics and it is such a beautiful way the mathematics works and the electricity. How the energy gets distributed is also like this
But I don't know why it explains the floatation the overflow of numbers.
alevel physics make me feel like newton ; dead
I have friends - well-educated, intelligent, enlightened friends with degrees in microbiology and oceanography - who refuse to accept that quantum mechanics or relativity is real. They believe it's made-up nonsense. Or, that's what they say they believe - they may well be trolling me.
but relativity has been proved by the atomic clocks
mredd888
And f=GMm/r2 was proved, until someone noticed that Mercury didn't orbit quite right, and it had to be adjusted. All the experiments performed so far are consistent with relativity and QM, but that doesn't prove them. The scientific method requires that we keep an open mind and look for disproofs for even the most reliable theories.
What saddens me is that people (even those with degrees in science) do not understand what science even is. A microbiologist who understands the scientific method would never doubt the existence of antimatter or quantum mechanics.
Adam Wojtczak Exactly. Many degrees in the sciences are, I suspect, taught "parrot fashion", and don't need the student to have an inquiring mind, although an analytical mind helps! And so perhaps the actual techniques used in scientific *research* are hardly touched upon.
Its like learning how to be a car mechanic - you know a lot about how an engine works, but designing one from scratch would be beyond most people.
Are you sure about that microbiology bit? Quantum mechanics forms a pretty fundamental part of organic chemistry, it is where the idea of atomic orbitals comes from.
I go to an American highschool and it frutrates me because I take physics, but my teacher only teaches the math at an algebra level of study. It motivates me actually to continue learning physics because of the lack of connection between the math and science. You can tell me how awesome quantum physics is and it's concepts, but I want to see the math behind it. I want to see the journey from Point A to Point B.
As a science teacher I believe first it is important to understand the concepts. So that you can look at something in your world and have a basic understanding of how works.
Only then should we go to the second stage which is the mathematical equations for prediction of results and of engineering related to that concept.
Not going to lie this is why kids think this is too hard and uncool. The professors give rather shit motivational lessons. "its not too hard, it's just the way the world is." What??? That sentence gives no explanation as to what advantage you have to study this or why "hard" is a relative term. Maybe if these professors focused a bit more on articulating their ideas in a manner that hits the heart of their audience then this wouldn't be a problem. The irony is palpable.
It would take lecture upon lecture, and for you to have an open mind, to understand the importance of physics and mathematics. Which, by ages 15-18, you no longer have.
Although, tbh, i agree, it is beautiful, and it is how it is, physics ftw
Although I think Tony goes a bit too extreme, he got the (imho) central core, which is, it is cool nowadays to not understand and therefore not care for maths.
It's not cool to not understand math. It's just that many people struggle with it, so it's relatable to hear from someone else that they struggled with it as well.
Adam Wojtczak which is another way of saying it is cool to now know it and the ones that do or try to understand it are seen as nerds and geeks.
being in year 11 at secondary school myself i must admit sometimes the work seems easier than it should be. problem is that many people just dont care and give up even on small things in lesson
I love physic and maths behind it (and other scientific topics) as long as teacher can explain things well. My gcse physic wasn't as easy as shown here. Now I am finishing my access science and i am disappointed by amount of physic we actually have. I had just 1 lesson (2h or so) which had extremely small amount of quantum physic and i would love to find out more about it (thats why i love such youtube channels!) and other interesting stuff. I always liked maths because sometimes numbers can illustrate things which cannot be seen with eyes.
I'm better off watching MIT OCW than listening in class
Cannot agree strongly enough with this - I spent two years barely understanding my A-level physics course because of the disjointed and superficial level at which it was taught. A month or so before exams I started watching the Walter Lewin lecture series and everything suddenly clicked - got an A* in the end :)
As an engineer teaching physics, I have a different perspective. Most engineering involves Newtonian mechanics and other old ideas. We don't discuss Higgs bosons or relativity and you don't need these to go to the moon or design a car. These interviewees are physicists and they are excited about the newer stuff. Significantly more students become engineers rather than physicists. So I don't have a problem with covering the old stuff because they are laws and they don't change.
I disagree with this assessment because it assumes students should only learn the old stuff; no one in the interviews argues that Newtonian mechanics is not useful. However, a high school physics class ought to teach the subject generally. You don't want a Geometry class that only teaches us about triangles, but a whole breadth of the subject.
“...because they are laws and they don’t change”. Hmmmmm
I didn't do my education in England. I did highest level physics in college before going uni for programming. (We have a broad range of subjects you have to do in college, i did 16 subjects in 29 modules, 3 years) It was so many calculations and so much math and it was hard but i also loved it. Doing programming now, depending on what you do, you can use these physics calculations in games and such and its so useful! And it's honestly just fun to know.
You guys should take a look at Brazil's high school maths and physics. You'd be impressed. They get complex numbers, newton's binomial theorem, pascal, aritimetic and geometric progressions, analytic geometry( only x and y axis), and even matrices!!!
I don't care. Math is fun.
Wait... NO CALCULUS?!?!?!!!! BUT CALCULUS IS SOOOOOOOOO AWESOME!!!!!
Maths is very commonly chosen for A-level (but not required) and at that level there is calculus. Also most people who do physics A level do maths as well
calculus is maths not physics.
Maths, especially calculus, is a crucial part of physics
Gooscar exactly. Without calculus physics is nothing because they are so related to each other
Gooscar I know lol but it's still maths, in my country we learn calculus in a math class at least but I get watcha mean
My perspective from an American high school environment Physics may only cover the older information however there is an emphasis on mathematical application and labs. I plan on taking the AP Physics C exam this spring.
Great video, anything you want to learn you must do it yourself. Step by step. I love the way these guys say maths with the s.
I'm struggling with the bias from the scientists, that math is the best way to understand physics for EVERYONE.
The GCSE is exactly that, a General certificate of education - it has to give the same standard of eduction to everyone on a general, or broad-reaching level; by nature, it can't focus on the detailed specifics. It has to encompass every child, from the gifted to the lower abilities.
The general population are either not interested or are unable to understand the minutia of degree level maths / physics. However, it is important that they have a basic understanding of the day to day results of that maths, just they don't need to be able to prove any of it. Eg. It is important to understand the effects of gravity, but when does the average person need to calculate out the effects of it in any more than a generalised way?
Even in specialised positions, a general understanding will do. For (awful) example, it isn't necessary for a pilot to be able to explain to the quantum level the forces at work on the blade tips in their engine, but it is for the person who designed it. However, the chances that the person who designed it can also fly a commercial airliner are small, even though they may understand the principle of it. Both these professionals would be educated to at least degree level and may even share A-Levels choices, such as maths or physics. Neither requires to be able to work in the other's specialised field in order for the plane to keep flying.
This is why we specialise at university. Some people do Maths and Physics, others do English or Music.
It shouldn't be expected that the Physicist have a deep understanding of 16th century literature or compositions, but that doesn't exclude them from appreciating them, and so forth.
I don't think that it is a failing of the education system, that their secondary school students are taught this way. It is more a constraint of the broad spectrum of student ability that they are required to cater for, given the need for the generalised standard imposed through the curriculum.
If you don't understand physics in a mathematical way, you don't really understand physics. It's better for you to not know it at all and know you don't know it, than be taught some fluffy conceptual stuff and think you know physics, when you don't really understand it. A little knowledge is worse than none. Personally, I think making every kid take GCSE physics is a silly move, because it gets kids thinking they understand stuff they don't really understand.
@@WorthlessWinner Agreed.
You think Physics has got it bad? At least you GET a subject at school.
Palaeontology doesn't even have a subject and it is the ENTIRE history of Earth from 4,600,000,000 to 10,000 years ago.
That's a HUGE chunk of history that the public just don't know about, and it contains past examples of climate change, invasive species and many other things that ordinary people now have the power to vote on.
If we don't start to take Palaeontology seriously, we won't be prepared for the world ahead.
It's like trying to decide whether to go to war with a country when you know nothing about its history more than a week ago!
+Bud Charles And that's why teamworks is important!!! we need people from different areas of study to uplift humanity. So, you can study Palaeontology and help lift humanity in your own way :D
+Bud Charles And physics and cosmology are the ENTIRE history of the universe from 13,700,000,000 years ago to present day.
:) Sorry for my Snarkyness.
Tim Horton Physics rarely ever talks about what happened after 4.5 billion years ago, it mainly concerns the history of space, not Earth. Until I hear the Permian Extinction or formation of the Isthmus of Panama mentioned in Physics class, I can't take you seriously. I remember my History teacher saying dinosaurs were history, I asked if we'd study them in History, he said no, I said well how are they history then?
Bud Charles Hum, I'd like to see how you can comment on youtube if physics is switched of :)
Bud Charles That has got to be the stupidest comment I've ever heard. Events of the past are history, whether you learn them in a certain class or not.
And physics rarely ever talks about what happened after 4.5 billions years ago? Get real dude.
My only issue with my teacher is that the high school i studied at, had it's curriculum based off of what kids learned in the middle school associated with the high school.
Our teacher would give us problems and exercises first, and made us come up with the formulas for a lot of things based on the exercises we couldn't solve on our own because we were missing said formulas
Honestly this is exactly why I never pursued further education in the Sciences, even though I had been taught science at school with minimal maths and I absolutely adored the sciences (especially physics and chemistry) but I not only am terrible at maths, I cannot stand the subject and as disheartening as it was because like I said I really, really loved the sciences, but I knew there was absolutely no way I could ever do or understand the maths involved.
As much as I do understand the annoyance that they aren't teaching these kids enough maths in physics, at the same time overall I think it helps to do it like that. I mean if my physics lessons had been full of maths when I was in school, I would have lost interest in that class so quickly and completely that I never would have cared about science for the rest of my life. I likely would have gone on to be someone who knew nothing about modern science and had less than zero interest in helping it out. Yet BECAUSE I was not chased away from the sciences by having unwanted maths thrown at me, these days I still love science, I watch and subscribe to just about every science youtuber I can, I do a few citizen science things, I discuss things within my understanding with like-minded people.
If my science classes had too much maths in them when I was at school, I wouldn't do any of that stuff today.
Bro.. All I learned in my high school physics class is F=ma lol
I study physics at UC Berkeley now.. I know more stuff :D
ForeverBored really?
ForeverBored what does F=ma mean ?
ForeverBored not even kinematics? lol
Facts
that reminds me of the way deepak chopra talks physics... well not so much as talk about as spew buzzwords so he can sell books... every time i hear the guy say "quantum energy" or "quantum healing" ...i cringe
+Tr4newreck Yeah, and in the USA at least there's an atrocious film "What the Bl33p Do W3 Kn0w" or whatever mash of symbols is in the title, which is also a total travesty of quantum theory. That's why we need more knowledge of real quantum theory. You may not need to be able to solve for the orbitals of Hydrogen as a general citizen, but you should at least know what an orbital means and know that it does solve an equation and isn't just "magic".
mike4ty4 i wish i paid more attention to physics and math when i was younger, i'm so interested in it now, but so much deficiency in my math.
...but to then write a book about it pretending that i know... i could not fathom doing that.
id be terrified somebody would call me out right away.... some of these people have no shame when they write with authority about things they barely scratched the surface of.
I read about modern science myself in high school and my teachers told me that I shouldn't do that so much because the time for that will come in university and this is exactly the problem.
Thank you for answering my question instead of freaking out and calling me a wanker. I really appreciate it, i'll have to check that video out.