I had this same experience being taught physics and maths. Just a bunch of what feel like pretty dull experiments which ends with a gold leaf moving...
But the STORY of physics is fascinating. Why each experiment was done, by who, to prove what etc etc. All the sciences are like a soap opera of personalities and disagreements that make them much more interesting - and memorable - if you know the back story.
That 'thin deep slice' comment really sums it up. No context, just a thing to memorise.
I think physics students should be give The Fabric of the Cosmos my Brian Greene to read before they start doing any actual learning. I bet there's a biology equivalent of a book that is a 'what we know so far and what we don't understand' - if you know of one please let me know.
> I had this same experience being taught physics and maths. Just a bunch of what feel like pretty dull experiments which ends with a gold leaf moving...
> But the STORY of physics is fascinating.
There’s a college some of my kids have been considering that takes a similar approach to their math (and sciences) curricula, starting math out with Euclid and progressing through Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Kepler (maybe Leibniz / Newton? Not sure), at each point motivating the development of astronomy and mathematics by showing how each person developed our understanding of the natural universe.
In comparison, in my college math courses, which were oriented towards engineering majors, I felt at the time like concepts were coming out of nowhere without justification, with no sense of how they fit in with anything else, other than the certainty that I had to keep up or I would be lost a week later.
I took gp's use of "opera" to describe an inclusive, wide range of genres that feature human relationships, like space operas. There's definitely mass appeal (think of Star Wars alone.)
If you took star wars and removed the action and acting and it was just a bunch of philosophical arguments written in a book then not many would like it. We know since there are many such books and they aren't very popular compared to the star wars movie.
But the STORY of physics is fascinating. Why each experiment was done, by who, to prove what etc etc. All the sciences are like a soap opera of personalities and disagreements that make them much more interesting - and memorable - if you know the back story.
That 'thin deep slice' comment really sums it up. No context, just a thing to memorise.
I think physics students should be give The Fabric of the Cosmos my Brian Greene to read before they start doing any actual learning. I bet there's a biology equivalent of a book that is a 'what we know so far and what we don't understand' - if you know of one please let me know.