jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net wrote:
>I have had many conversations with them on this subject
>and feel that if you can find someone who truly understands physics they can explain a great
>deal of it to "non-math" people using almost no equations. People who cannot explain it well in
>simplified language do not truly understand the subject in my opinion even if they do
>understand the math.
>
Come to think of it, my first year at UCLA, I was a chem major and I was
taking honors Physics -- just me and a hundred guys who had built
cyclotrons out of matchsticks when they were kids. We used a different
textbook from the normal physics class; it was written by Richard
Feynman, and the really scary thing about it was that there were no
numbers in it. I remember it had Maxwell's equations, which were a bit
tough because of the partial differentials...??? Anyway, it was weird
not having the numbers, like being out at sea without a paddle. But the
point was that they wanted to steep the advanced students in something
else...dare I call it natural philosophy? The text book used by the
normal, engineering-targeted class, was full of numbers.
Joanna
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