For physics majors, I think students need to practice model building. They also need to understand what has been done before. They need to stand on the shoulders of giants too.
swans on tea
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For physics majors, I think students need to practice model building. They also need to understand what has been done before. They need to stand on the shoulders of giants too.
Telling students the answer, process and product, is overall good. A downside is that alternative processes and products are then quashed, for the students no longer need create something independently clever. Euclid held sway for more than 2000 years. Draw a triangle on a ball. Euclid is not enough. Didn’t anybody connect observation to failed theory before the 1800s?
Contemporary physical theory arises from mirror symmetries – facile mathematics not empirical relevance. Rigorous derivation from weak founding postulates delivers flawed physics, manually inserted symmetry breakings patch holes. Conformal field theory beyond 2-D (Calabi-Yau, AdS/CFT correspondence, supersymmetric gauge theories, Sasaki-Einstein) proposes nothing testable. Quantum gravitation is an empirical disaster
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/erotor1.jpg
Two geometric parity Eotvos experiments – unambiguous test of postulated mirror-symmetric physics in existing apparatus. Somebody should look.