Thinking in Physics: The pleasure of reasoning and understanding PDF
Preview Thinking in Physics: The pleasure of reasoning and understanding
Thinking in Physics Grenoble Sciences The aim of Grenoble Sciences is twofold: - to produce works corresponding to a clearly defined project, without the constraints of trends nor curriculum, - to ensure the utmost scientific and pedagogic quality of the selected works: each project is selected by Orenoble Sciences with the help of anonymous referees. In order to optimize the work, the authors interact for a year (on average) with the members of a reading committee, whose names figure in the front pages of the work, which is then co-published with the most suitable publishing partoer. Contact: Te!.: (33) 4 76 51 46 95 E-mail: [email protected] Website: https:llgrenoble-sciences.ujf-grenoble.fr Scientific Director of Grenoble Sciences Jean BORNAREL, Emeritus Professor at the Joseph Fourier University, France Grenoble Sciences is a department of the Joseph Fourier University supported by the French Notional Ministry for IDgher Educotion and Research and the Rhone-Alpes Region. Thinking in Physics is an improved version of the origiual book En physique, pour comprendre by Laurence VIENNOT EDP Sciences, Orenoble Sciences' collection, 2011, ISBN 978-2-7598 -0656-0. The Reading Committee of the French version included the following members: - Guy AUBERT, Emeritus Professor, Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble 1. Scien tific adviser CEAlDSM/Irfu - Jon OGBORN, Emeritus Professor, Institute of Education, University of London - Jacques RICARIl, Emeritus Professor, Paris Diderot University, Paris 7. Member of the Academie des sciences - Madeleine VEYSSIE, Honorary Professor, Pierre & Marie Curie University, Paris 6 Translation from original French version performed by Chris COLLISTER, Jonathan UPlOHN and Nicole SAUVAL 1jIpesetting: Anne-Laure PASSAVANT Figures: Simone GERLIER, Pixel project Cover illustration: Alice GIRAUD, with extracts from: slits - W. KAM!NSKI; water jets - Gorazd PLANINSIC; Doppler effect - Pbroks 13, Wikimedia; hot-air balloons - Jean-Simon ASSELIN, Flickr Laurence Viennot Thinking in Physics The pleasure of reasoning and understanding Laurence Viennot Laboratoire de Didactique André Revuz PRES Sorbonne Paris Cité, Université Paris Diderot 75205 Paris Cedex 13 Translated from “En Physique pour Comprendre, Laurence Viennot, Collection Grenoble Sciences. Paris: EDP Sciences 2011” ISBN 978-94-017-8665-2 ISBN 978-94-017-8666-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-8666-9 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2014932679 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) F oreword Laurence Viennot’s book is simultaneously both modest and very ambitious; both very practical and highly visionary. It is modest and practical in choosing to address the mundane everyday issues that confront every physics teacher every day, and to offer tried and tested ways of dealing with them, which any teacher could readily adopt. But it is ambitious and visionary in the very fundamental problems and issues it chooses to confront – issues that are all too often neglected or ignored, yet which can make all the difference to the experience of learning physics. “Thank you – you made me think”. This is one of the most telling, yet typical, res- ponses of students to the exercises Laurence Viennot has devised for them. It is this attitude to what physics is–as involving hard but rewarding thinking–which has informed the work carried out by Laurence Viennot and her colleagues over several decades. The key to all this work is the constant search for the possibility of intel- lectual satisfaction for students. Physics, of course, offers many pleasures, but this surely is one of the most important for those who engage seriously with the subject. In the best possible sense then, this book is seriously unfashionable. It does not go for the easy solutions, of “fun” with physics, which are often offered to try to make physics more enjoyable. Nor is it a book full of idealised exhortations, but rather one full of practical well-worked-out suggestions for ways to get students thinking hard, productively and pleasurably. As a teacher, you can expect it to challenge some of the things you habitually do and think, even to annoy you from time to time as it brings you up short against some common confusion or contradiction, including several that appear in many a textbook. See, for example, whether you really unders- tand what lifts a hot-air balloon, or whether you too have without knowing it been sold a self-contradictory explanation. VI Thinking in Physics For Laurence Viennot, the pleasure of physics lies in its great sweep and power, in the way a small number of principles govern a huge range of phenomena, with elegance, parsimony and internal consistency. If you share anything of this feeling for the subject, and want to know how to get students–real everyday students in any classroom–to share it too, then this book deserves your careful attention. It will give you a magnificent supply of insights and ideas, all of which you can put to use no matter what programme of physics you happen to teach. Jon oGBorn Emeritus Professor of Science Education Institute of Education University of London F F oreword to the rench edition Just over ten years ago, in my foreword to one of the many books Laurence Viennot has written dedicated to the teaching of physics and aptly entitled Enseigner la phy- sique [Teaching physics for the English version], I pointed out just how disaffected students had become with scientific pursuits, not only in the United States, but also in Europe, and France in particular. As becomes clear from the very first sentence, this new book, Thinking in Physics, tackles the problem from an original perspective: “Above all, Physics has got to be enthralling. That is what we all go on repeating, but here we are at the start of the third millennium faced with falling numbers, and the likelihood of a dearth of physi- cists in the near future”. Don’t misunderstand me, Laurence Viennot is not rallying to the flag of those edu- cationalists intent on transforming all forms of teaching into some sort of play acti- vity. Naturally, it is quite possible to learn while playing but her aim is altogether more ambitious, since what she is concerned with is not so much learning as with understanding; this involves a far more deeply motivating intellectual satisfaction. For many students or school pupils, physics doesn’t go much beyond “applying the formula” to “solve” a problem to satisfy the conventions set out in the detailed ins- tructions of the official programmes. The system is so strictly constrained and codi- fied that students can learn without understanding; this is hardly very attractive. Thinking in Physics is not what you would call an easy book, but happily the reader can be inspired (or intrigued) by dipping at will into the Contents. It’s also a book which may puzzle and provoke, giving even the most well-informed of physicists something to think about. To give just one among the examples illustrating the cover, there is a great deal that needs to be understood before embarking on a flight in a hot- air balloon: see the “instructional hot-air balloon” of Chapter 6! VIII Thinking in Physics The layout of the website associated with the book (https://grenoble-sciences.ujf- grenoble.fr/pap-ebook/viennot) provides easy access, so that the reader can fully benefit from the numerous bibliographic references. Another of the examples on the cover illustration is that of the pierced bottles of Appendix D: here we have a marvellous accumulation of historical errors, and imagine my surprise, and my disappointment on discovering that the genius Leonardo da VinCi himself had failed to verify his conclusions experimentally, despite it being so much easier than for his flying machines. I recommend this book not only to all my colleagues engaged in teaching physics and other scientific disciplines, at whatever level, but also to students, future teachers and all those who take pleasure in understanding... Guy aUBert Emeritus Professor, Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble Honorary Government Adviser (Conseiller d’État) Former director general of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique A cknowledgements I am very much indebted to Philippe Colin, Jean-Luc leroy-BUry, Ivan Feller and Stephanie mathé for their friendly, intense and precious contribution to the discus- sions and reflections presented here. Furthermore, I thank them very much for kindly accepting to check how some research investigation results we performed together are quoted in this book.
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