Talk:Physics education

Physics Start‑class High‑importance

	Physics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics articles
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Education Start‑class Mid‑importance

	Education portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Education, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of education and education-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EducationWikipedia:WikiProject EducationTemplate:WikiProject Educationeducation articles
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

comment

1) At this point the primary focus of physics education is typically to make it inquiry based. The current version of the article (12/5/06) does mention that lectures are often less effective than hands-on learning in a physics classroom, but this is probably insufficient at this point for an article on physics education. Suggest integrating up to date physics education research (in summary).

2) In the second example under "Additional examples of misconceptions in physics" the equation F=ma is given and I think in this place it is necessary to identify it as either Fnet=ma or use sigma notation or some other alternative since it can be deceiving to say that Newton's second law requires that F=ma.

--Gellender 05:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

3) I believe the focus of PER is 'both' to develop new methods for education, but certainly also to better understand knowledge formation in physics. One approach to PER that comes from the natural sciences is much influenced by cognitive science, neuro psychology and also by physics itself, while a different approach is more from the humanities tradition and pedagogical science.

4) Why on earth are "American school examples" headlines in the global wikipedia entry of PER???

DrProfAlb (talk) 11:20, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Should Physics Education Research (PER) be a separate article?

I was searching for PER to get some quick content to explain to my colleagues what the field is. I didn't find a PER article, so I had to dig a bit to find this. I think PER, which concerns itself with researching student learning and evaluating teaching methods, is sufficiently different to merit a separate article. But I am not an expert in the field.

Raddick 13:54, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there's a dedicated journal about it now from the American Physical Society, http://prst-per.aps.org/ The area is indeed notable, and many academically notable peers of this area identify themselves as physics education researchers. DrProfAlb (talk) 11:16, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why was this article nearly an orphan?

Why was this important article nearly an orphan? The articles on Physics and Science education did not even link to here, and no one editing this article seems to be cooperating with anyone else. That oversight is easily corrected. I have made new edits, additions and links. I hope some other people can jump in. In a relatively short amount of time this article can have a number of new editors, and be significantly improved.

PRS

Should Classroom Performance Systems applications be mentioned? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.2.40.144 (talk) 20:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Global

Please try and give a global perspective to any expansion of this article. 82.20.28.142 (talk) 23:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Physics as Modeling

Consider mentioning the Physics as Modeling idea of Dr. David Hestenes and the new studio format being employed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.159.209.23 (talk) 23:05, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

XKCD

HA! It doesn't redirect to Engineers. Checkmate, XKCD. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.23.224.58 (talk) 19:31, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I also rushed over here to check it this morning. a13ean (talk) 21:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It did, obviously. I swear, every single xkcd comic referring to Wikipedia results in a protected page. Arda Xi^(Talk) 06:05, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And it will likely happen here, too. I don't know if its the author doing it, or someone goofing on us, but manipulating the encyclopedia to make a point kinda pisses me off. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 06:40, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I really doubt it's the author--I think it's simply that the comic has such a huge following that it includes a plentiful supply of pranksters. Ccrrccrr (talk) 11:07, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect

Is there a reason to have a physics major page redirect to physics education? Only one little paragraph of this article would apply to physics majors; most is about high-school and lower level physics courses. And we don't have a redirect from "art history major" to "art history education", "engineering major" to "engineering education", etc. I would advocate making it a stub article saying something like "A phyics major is an academic major in physics." Perhaps with a "see also" to physics education.Ccrrccrr (talk) 11:07, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The real reason: because otherwise eight thousand jokesters will just make it redirect to Engineer as per today's XKCD cartoon. At least this way it redirects to something sensible and we don't have to keep at it. This problem doesn't obtain for art history major and the other hypothetical articles you mention. - Montréalais (talk)

That's not a good enough reason. We could easily just salt the Physics major page. -- tariqabjotu 17:49, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

With 2 votes for and none against, I'm inclined to make the change, especially since the only argument against was rebutted above.Ccrrccrr (talk) 02:32, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

More importantly, Wikipedia has exceedingly few instances besides this one — quite possibly even absolutely none at all, though I haven't investigated every possible combination enough to be 100% sure of that — where we have an article about "subject education" and then a separate article about "subject major" which consists of just a single line defining it as an academic major in the subject and then linking to the broader article on subject education. If you can add meaningful content about what makes "physics major" an encyclopedic topic in its own right, instead of a title that should just be redirected here instead, then by all means go ahead and write it — but in its current form, it simply isn't necessary or useful at all and should either be redirected here or just deleted outright. If there's an ongoing problem with it being used inappropriately, then be aware that we do have the ability to salt a redlink. Bearcat (talk) 17:24, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The correctness of xkcd is more important than the correctness of wikipedia. We should Ensure that Physics Major redirects to Engineering. The joke must go on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.107.74.153 (talk) 11:24, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wrongo. Wikipedia has to be accurate according to the precepts of reality, not according to the precepts of a comic strip. Bearcat (talk) 17:25, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This turned out to be parallel discussion to the main discussion of this issue at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2012_May_7. Further comments will be there.Ccrrccrr (talk) 21:58, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I updated the Physics_education#Physics_education_in_American_universities section to make it more general, not just about one program, and to make it a good target for the redirect of physics major. Any comments? Ccrrccrr (talk) 16:03, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Section on Education in Ancient Greece

Most of the stuff in this section is wrong.

Copernicus didn't make a discovery at all. He was a mathematician who was trying to solve planetary orbits by adapting a heliocentric model. There were many people before Copernicus that thought the earth revolved around the sun, Copernicus was just the first to show that the circles lined up neatly if you arranged things this way.

I do not recall any discoveries made in the middle ages that didn't fit Aristotle's physics. The earliest discovery I can think of is of pneumatic phenomena in water pumps by miners in the 16th century which led to the rejection of Aristotle's horror vacui in the 17th century.

Also, the story of Galileo dropping balls off the tower of Pisa is generally regarded as a myth. Aristotle's theory that a heavier object falls faster than a light one takes air into account and wasn't contradicted by observation. Aristotle's theory of impetus did receive some critique in the middle ages, but all of the critique was rhetorical.

Basically, it needs to be said in a more historically-conscious way.