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On Physics
13 years ago
I am, for the first time, taking a physics course that is not explicitly designed for physics majors, and I have to say that I am, for the first time, seeing why so many people dislike physics.
Strictly speaking, that statement is a misnomer, because I feel that there is very little physics in this course. The book simply presents equations and the problems provide multiple sets of numbers to plug into them, hiding them behind unit conversions and clever wording to make the act of plug-and-chug seem difficult rather than strictly tedious.
The text is purely designed around two things: memorization and calculation. Not around the real fun of physics, which is understanding and explaining physical phenomena. For example, when it teaches special relativity, it presents the Lorentz transformations for time strictly in terms of t, which is fine and dandy for simple calculations, but it fails to mention the more physically-important form, written in terms of ct. Therefore, one of the key concepts of special relativity--the concept of Minkowsky space (x, y, z, ct) and by consequence Minkowsky space-time diagrams--is lost... and thus the theoretical concept (and beauty) of the spacetime interval as anything but an equation is lost.
When the book presents proofs, it's as if it deliberately presents them to be confusing, by consequence of leaving out the "difficult" details--for example, not citing the trigonometric identities used to simplify the equation of a standing wave from the sum of two waves. With traveling waves, it simply says "wt-kx travels to the right and wt+kx travels to the left," without giving any mathematical justification as to why (okay, that might be a little too picky, but it still bothered me because it's encouraging memorization rather than understanding). In doing so it ironically makes actual understanding of the material more difficult... so all you can do is memorize.
In two chapters of waves, there also has been no mention of the d'Alembertian wave equation, so when someone asks, "Mathematically, what is a wave?", well, there's no answer anywhere in the textbook. Consequently, there is no way to tell if an equation satisfies the wave equation and there is no proof for superposition.
Perhaps I'm spoiled by my excellent education the past two semesters (the fact that I know all of these things is sort of testament to that). But to me, this "physics for chemists and engineers" class is boring and superficial.
Strictly speaking, that statement is a misnomer, because I feel that there is very little physics in this course. The book simply presents equations and the problems provide multiple sets of numbers to plug into them, hiding them behind unit conversions and clever wording to make the act of plug-and-chug seem difficult rather than strictly tedious.
The text is purely designed around two things: memorization and calculation. Not around the real fun of physics, which is understanding and explaining physical phenomena. For example, when it teaches special relativity, it presents the Lorentz transformations for time strictly in terms of t, which is fine and dandy for simple calculations, but it fails to mention the more physically-important form, written in terms of ct. Therefore, one of the key concepts of special relativity--the concept of Minkowsky space (x, y, z, ct) and by consequence Minkowsky space-time diagrams--is lost... and thus the theoretical concept (and beauty) of the spacetime interval as anything but an equation is lost.
When the book presents proofs, it's as if it deliberately presents them to be confusing, by consequence of leaving out the "difficult" details--for example, not citing the trigonometric identities used to simplify the equation of a standing wave from the sum of two waves. With traveling waves, it simply says "wt-kx travels to the right and wt+kx travels to the left," without giving any mathematical justification as to why (okay, that might be a little too picky, but it still bothered me because it's encouraging memorization rather than understanding). In doing so it ironically makes actual understanding of the material more difficult... so all you can do is memorize.
In two chapters of waves, there also has been no mention of the d'Alembertian wave equation, so when someone asks, "Mathematically, what is a wave?", well, there's no answer anywhere in the textbook. Consequently, there is no way to tell if an equation satisfies the wave equation and there is no proof for superposition.
Perhaps I'm spoiled by my excellent education the past two semesters (the fact that I know all of these things is sort of testament to that). But to me, this "physics for chemists and engineers" class is boring and superficial.
I studied mechanics and dynamics (classical and special relativity) in my first year, but only learnt the accompanying mathematical rigor in my final, masters year. If you want rigor, there are textbooks out there but they are dense and highly specialised. People have written books entirely on Hermitian Matrices, or Second-Order Homogeneous Differential Equations. You won't find these things in physics textbooks because one it isn't neccessary and two there isn't room!
If you want the physical intuition, then stick with the basic stuff and get to know it.