What our left hand has been doing

MAR 01, 1970

Although set up to develop effective ways of teaching future physicists, CCP is concerning itself more and more with the nonscience students.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3022016

John M. Fowler

Richard West

WHO ARE “NONSCIENCE STUDENTS” and what shall we teach them? These appear to be reasonable questions. The Commission on College Physics has asked these questions in various ways during its ten years of existence and has some products and by‐products of the asking. The vagueness of the first part of the question has made the last part difficult to answer; it is not easy to decide what to teach students when you only know who they are not. In the instruction of our physics majors we can afford to rely heavily on intuition. These students are exposed to physics and physicists for a long enough period to learn from the left hand the subtle processes of physics along with the content that we teach with the right. But we do not have time for this approach to our nonscience students. We must do the choreography for the left as well as the right hand.

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More about the authors

John M. Fowler, Commission on College Physics and University of Maryland.

Richard West, Commission on College Physics and University of Maryland.