Friday, July 23, 2010

Why calculators are not helping you learn physics (or math)

Have a read. In particular, comment 6 is appropriate.

In my opinion, and Dr. Orzel's it seems, using a calculator except when absolutely necessary is really obscuring a lot of the physics going on in the problems, and, ironically, making things more tedious than they need to be. (I have a sort of boilerplate rant about using numbers in problems, which is why I often just don't include numbers in the problems. They only hide the interesting physics.)

That being said, you're free to use calculators whenever you like. All I'm saying is that they are, if anything, probably hindering your learning process if you become too reliant on them. Try solving some of the next homework set without a calculator, and see if you notice a difference in your understanding of the problems.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice read!!! I know we have gotten off schedule a bit regarding the quizzes. Will we have a quiz tomorrow?

pleclair said...

Quiz tomorrow on induction, see latest post. Homework on Tuesday.