While working out, my brother and I were chatting about goals for 2025. These aren’t New Year’s resolutions that are vague and optimistic, but actionable tasks that are specific, measurable and recorded. It’s the difference between “start working out” and “go to the gym twice per week”.
Later on, we were talking about famous scientists, and I mentioned Tycho Brahe. He is the Danish astronomer of the Renaissance that doesn’t have the notoriety of Kepler, Galileo or Copernicus. Brahe’s contributions to astronomy were substantial, but his personal life is fascinating. His nose was cut off in a sword fight, and he had a pet moose that died because it got drunk at a party and fell down the stairs.
That got me in trouble because my brother wants to add physics learning to his 2025 goals. He had a quarter of Physics at OSU and is looking for a conceptual understanding rather than a rigorous mathematical treatment. He wants the sizzle, but not the steak.
Obviously this is my job, so I’ve put some thought into it. I’ve got tons of fun stuff, but it’s all embedded in substantive lessons. My friend Boch is the same way. Giving my brother a science history story of the week seems too unstructured to be beneficial.
My brother suggested that I add a “Physics History” category on this website. I could, but other people have already done that, and much better. Also, this feels a bit like an under-performing physics student who insists that he will understand the concepts if I keep doing a bunch more example problems. I do all the work as he passively observes.
Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia, was learning geometry. That can be tedious and doesn’t come easily to everyone. He asked if there was an easier way or a short cut to learning. Euclid, known as the “Father of Geometry”, responded with, “Sire, there is no royal road to geometry.”
At social media historian Flappr likes to say, “You have to do the reading.”
Still though, I must support my brother in his academic pursuits.
I have come up with a protocol for being introduced to conceptual physics and an understanding of the important people. It comes in two parts, and relies on educational videos being more substantive.
Julius Sumner Miller was a physics professor and television educator. In the 1960’s, he had a TV show on PBS introducing conceptual physics. He was an enthusiastic and knowledgeable evangelist. Each episode is only 15 minutes long, covers a bunch of classic demonstrations and includes references to notable physicists.
The first part is to watch a video and write down the physicists he mentions. The second part is to research those people. They are all significant and interesting.
Here is his episode on Bernoulli, and is relevant to airplane lift.
Youtube is a great resource for learning anything, but there is too much. Where to start?
Physics educational videos went through an evolution. From the 1950’s through the 1980’s, physics videos covered fundamental concepts and assumed an audience who wanted to be educated, rather than entertained.
The earlier videos assumed an audience with a longer attention span and had intelligent and earnest presenters. Some of the PSSC videos are my favorites. PSSC was an effort to improve physics education as a response to Soviet technological progress. They are so dry.
In the 1990’s, Bill Nye the Science Guy and other science shows were coming up with more entertainment and less education. Bill Nye’s show is worthwhile because he takes one concept, like pressure, and looks at it from as many directions as possible. He would show many interesting applications.
Since then, most videos are all applications and demonstrations, without much deep, conceptual instruction. Mythbusters and Modern Marvels are two series that were popular.
These videos are engaging and instructive when students know the underlying concepts. I used both series in class.
Every year, we’d watch this Modern Marvels episode, Breaking the Sound Barrier when we concluded the chapter on sound. I chose this video so students learned of the Golden Age of Flight and were aware of American hero, Chuck Yeager.