Matter, interaction, and change: A framework for an integrated approach to teaching introductory physics.
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| Název: | Matter, interaction, and change: A framework for an integrated approach to teaching introductory physics. |
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| Autoři: | Hecht, Eugene1 (AUTHOR) genehecht@aol.com |
| Zdroj: | American Journal of Physics. Nov2025, Vol. 93 Issue 11, p865-873. 9p. |
| Témata: | *PHYSICS education, *FORCE & energy, *APPLIED sciences, *MASS (Physics), *CURRICULUM planning, *MOMENTUM (Mechanics) |
| Abstrakt: | With the development of Relativity Theory and the Standard Model, physics has made great advances in our understanding of its basic concepts. Yet little of that insight has informed modern pedagogy, particularly at the introductory level. Many textbooks, trade books, and journal articles still often refer to force as pushes and pulls, define energy in terms of work, claim that mass is the quantity-of-matter, equate mass and inertia, treat energy and momentum as if they were unrelated, and generally have little to say about what matter is. Based on the foundational perspective that there is matter, it interacts, and that interaction results in physical change, we develop a coordinated and integrated set of conceptual definitions of the primary ideas of matter, interaction, force, energy, inertia, momentum, and mass. Editor's Note: Our understanding of matter and mass has fundamentally changed several times over the last few centuries. The concept of atoms was introduced by ancient Indian and Greek philosophers, developed more formally by Boltzmann in the late 19th century, and was only considered proven by Perrin in 1908. Thomson showed that electrons were particles in 1897, while Rutherford showed the same for nuclei in 1911. This prompted Bohr's "solar-system" atomic model, which lasted only until de Broglie proposed the concept of "matter waves" and Schrodinger's 1925 wave equation, which supplanted Bohr's heuristic. So matter is particles, but particles are actually waves. Meanwhile, at the other end of the length scale, relativity was being invented, with Einstein showing in 1905 that mass was actually energy. And yet most introductory textbooks give centuries-old classical definitions such as "mass is the quantity of matter," while thermodynamics, quantum, and relativity textbooks often develop them in very different ways. How should these foundational concepts be properly taught in early physics courses and across fields? This paper discusses the philosophical issues and proposes a consistent scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
| Databáze: | Academic Search Index |
Nájsť tento článok vo Web of Science | Abstrakt: | With the development of Relativity Theory and the Standard Model, physics has made great advances in our understanding of its basic concepts. Yet little of that insight has informed modern pedagogy, particularly at the introductory level. Many textbooks, trade books, and journal articles still often refer to force as pushes and pulls, define energy in terms of work, claim that mass is the quantity-of-matter, equate mass and inertia, treat energy and momentum as if they were unrelated, and generally have little to say about what matter is. Based on the foundational perspective that there is matter, it interacts, and that interaction results in physical change, we develop a coordinated and integrated set of conceptual definitions of the primary ideas of matter, interaction, force, energy, inertia, momentum, and mass. Editor's Note: Our understanding of matter and mass has fundamentally changed several times over the last few centuries. The concept of atoms was introduced by ancient Indian and Greek philosophers, developed more formally by Boltzmann in the late 19th century, and was only considered proven by Perrin in 1908. Thomson showed that electrons were particles in 1897, while Rutherford showed the same for nuclei in 1911. This prompted Bohr's "solar-system" atomic model, which lasted only until de Broglie proposed the concept of "matter waves" and Schrodinger's 1925 wave equation, which supplanted Bohr's heuristic. So matter is particles, but particles are actually waves. Meanwhile, at the other end of the length scale, relativity was being invented, with Einstein showing in 1905 that mass was actually energy. And yet most introductory textbooks give centuries-old classical definitions such as "mass is the quantity of matter," while thermodynamics, quantum, and relativity textbooks often develop them in very different ways. How should these foundational concepts be properly taught in early physics courses and across fields? This paper discusses the philosophical issues and proposes a consistent scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| ISSN: | 00029505 |
| DOI: | 10.1119/5.0173764 |