

Consider a Different Physics Textbook - RougeFemme
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/5-reasons-you-should-consider-a-different-physics-textbook/

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al2o3cr
"We live in a world of cheap and fast computers such that numerical
calculations are a fairly standard solution method in just about every
scientific and engineering field. Students might as well start using them
right away, right?"

Sez a Wired author who's probably never had to deal with numerically unstable
integrals, poorly-conditioned matrices or sampling rate errors.

Numerical calculations are powerful, but they're also subject to a whole host
of issues related to finite-precision arithmetic; it's quite possible to set
up a numerical calculation that returns nonsense if you don't have a solid
intuition for what's going on.

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privong
> Numerical calculations are powerful, but they're also subject to a whole
> host of issues related to finite-precision arithmetic; it's quite possible
> to set up a numerical calculation that returns nonsense if you don't have a
> solid intuition for what's going on.

Very true, but I think that is another argument for students doing this right
away - it's a great opportunity to teach students about the issues with
numerical methodologies.

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Iftheshoefits
The computation is not the physics.

Students need a firm grounding in the analytical and empirical foundations of
physics in order to comprehend the issues with numerical methodologies for
investigating complicated physical systems properly, though. I've done plenty
of work investigating unstable, nonlinear systems for which no closed-form
analytical solution exists (they abound, of course, for any non-trivial
problem). I'm not sure that having my undergraduate and basic graduate
education "mixed up" with issues around numerical solutions would have made
the work any easier to understand or deal with. It might have made it harder.

There is no reason they cannot be taught together, though, and perhaps it
might be a better approach for some students. I believe that every
undergraduate physics curriculum ought to have a senior level course in
computational physics.

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privong
I agree with you that learning the physics is distinct from learning the
numerical aspects. However, I think there is value in learning computational
techniques early on (and possibly in parallel with the physics). If my
experience is representative (and it might not be), the majority of undergrad
physics majors do not wind up pursuing a physics research career, and the
numerical skills might not be of more use than the analytic skills. Of course,
it's certainly true that these numerical skills can be obtained in a separate
class. I'm not sure it's clear-cut whether having them together is better or
worse than having them separate. I think one could make a reasonable case
either way.

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replicant
I have checked the book on Amazon through the look inside and it has not
convinced me. I have the impression that it is the kind of book that spend
loads of pages to talk about a simple idea. I am more inclined towards books
that are not very thick and that force you to be a quite active reader. My
personal choice for 1st year physics text book is Physics by Alonso Finn.
Their attempt to build all the concepts from basic ideas is what appeals to me
most. It also present some rather challenging problems for an undergraduate.

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dfan
The best undergraduate mechanics textbook I've seen is Morin's, though it
probably requires a certain kind of student (one who is not fazed by taking
things up one level). Morin does a great job of showing how experts actually
solve problems (e.g., looking for symmetries, doing dimensional analysis,
checking extreme cases) rather than just plugging in formulas. The downside is
that if you just want to apply formulas, his methods can look like a bag of
magic tricks.

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leephillips
There is a long history of trying out different ways to teach physics to
undergraduates. In my undergraduate college the faculty experimented with
starting with quantum mechanics and ending up with classical physics;
introductory calculus was sometimes taught using nonstandard analysis. My
thesis advisor in graduate school wrote an intro physics text that included
simulations from the beginning, in the `80s. He even wrote a special version
of Basic that used vectors to make it easier for students. In Germany it's
popular to teach mechanics using momentum currents instead of the force
concept.

I agree that introducing numerics early is risky: it's easy to get what looks
like a smooth, convergent solution from a naive calculation that happens to be
wrong.

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judk
Richard Feynman taught simulation (of planetary orbits) in his famous first-
year lectures (which became the famous text book) with a page long table of
computed values, and remarked that this was a powerful new technique that was
going to dominate physics as computers increased in power.

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leephillips
This might have been what inspired my advisor, who's thesis advisor was
Feynman (making Feynman my grand-advisor).

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gms7777
We used Six Ideas that Changed Physics in my introductory course (which the
author of this article mentions as another non-traditional text, and dismisses
without discussion. I thought that it was an excellent text, probably the best
textbooks that I used during my physics undergrad (with the exception of the
E&M section. That was poorly written). Our professor combined it with a
nontraditional course format: You read the chapter and do problems before the
lecture on that subject, and the lecture is dedicated to more in depth
discussion, clarification, and some amount of group and individual work),
which I thought was a really effective and engaging way to teach a large
introductory course.

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cshimmin
I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing, but: intro physics courses are
not designed to teach physics, really. They're designed to give _intuition_
about _mechanics_. In practice, physicists don't really think much about
concepts like forces; although that's what an engineer building a bridge needs
to worry about. If you want a technical and conceptually pure understanding of
physics, well, that's what the next 3-8 years of study is for.

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msie
I've never seen such in-depth discussion of electrical currents anywhere else
than in these books. I came to these books through the amasci.com website.

