Preliminaries
See, Do,Teach
If you are reading this, I assume that you are either taking a course in physics or wish to learn physics
on your own. If this is the case, I want to begin by teaching you the importance of your personal
engagementin the learning process. If it comes right down to it, how well you learnphysics, how
good a grade you get, and how muchfunyou have all depend on how enthusiastically you tackle
the learning process. If you remain disengaged, detatched from the learning process, you almost
certainly will do poorly and be miserable while doing it. If you can findany degreeof engagement
- or open enthusiasm – with the learning process you will very likely do well, or at least as well as
possible.
Note that I use the termlearning, notteaching– this is to emphasize from the beginning that
learning is a choice and thatyouare in control. Learning is active; being taught is passive. It is up
to you toseize controlof your own educational process andfully participate, not sit back and wait
for knowledge to be forcibly injected into your brain.
You may find yourself stuck in a course that is taught in a traditionalway, by an instructor that
lectures, assigns some readings, and maybe on a good day puts on alittle dog-and-pony show in
the classroom with some audiovisual aids or some demonstrations. The standard expectation in this
class is to sit in your chair and watch, passive, taking notes. No realengagement is “required” by
the instructor, and lacking activities or a structure that encourages it, you lapse into becoming a
lecture transcription machine, recording all kinds of things that make no immediate sense to you
and telling yourself that you’ll sort it all out later.
You may find yourself floundering in such a class – for good reason. The instructor presents an
ocean of material in each lecture, and you’re going to actually retainat most a few cupfuls of it
functioning as a scribe and passively copying his pictures and symbolswithout first extracting their
sense. And the lecturemakeslittle sense, at least at first, and reading (if you do any reading at all)
does little to help. Demonstrations can sometimes make one or two ideas come clear, but only at
the expense of twenty other things that the instructor now has no time to cover and expects you
to get from the readings alone. You continually postpone going overthe lectures and readings to
understand the material any more than is strictly required to do the homework, until one day abig
testdraws nigh and you realize that you really don’t understand anythingand have forgotten most
of what you did, briefly, understand. Doom and destruction loom.
Sound familiar?
On the other hand, you may be in a course where the instructor hasstructured the course with
a balanced mix ofopenlecture (held as a freeform discussion where questions aren’t justencouraged
but required) and group interactive learning situations such as a carefully structured recitation and
lab where discussion and doing blend together, where students teach each other and use what they
have learned in many ways and contexts. If so, you’re lucky, but luck only goes so far.
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