{"id":11793,"date":"2012-06-01T04:36:05","date_gmt":"2012-06-01T09:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=11793"},"modified":"2012-06-01T04:36:05","modified_gmt":"2012-06-01T09:36:05","slug":"within-epsilon-of-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/11793","title":{"rendered":"Within Epsilon of the Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2012\/05\/31\/excellent-approximations-and-lying-to-children\/\">Excellent Approximations and Lying to Children<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[I]t\u2019s true that Euclidian geometry is only a special case of the mroe general geometry of spacetime. But it\u2019s an amazingly good approximation to any situation you will ever encounter. Which is why we teach it to children\u2013 because it\u2019s vastly simpler, and the cases where it doesn\u2019t work are very far from everyday experience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reed.com\/blog-dpr\/?p=103\">The post<\/a> on which this comment is based seems to propose doing things the hard way \u2014 why teach non-Euclidean geometry without having the foundation in Euclidean geometry.  Do you really want to teach that kinetic energy is \\((gamma -1)mc^2\\) &nbsp; and, perhaps more importantly, do you want to derive how you got that, rather than going with the Newtonian approximation that&#8217;s going to hold as long as you are limited to everyday speeds?<\/p>\n<p>Physics curricula aren&#8217;t perfect \u2014 I think e.g. the Bohr model can do more harm than good \u2014 but then again that&#8217;s not really an example of a model that&#8217;s approximately correct.  The suggestion that we abandon teaching classical physics and instead we dive into quantum and relativistic topics (starting with lasers at Eight O&#8217;clock on day 1) means explaining the details while simultaneously trying to get across basic ideas like forces and energy.  I think that&#8217;s a lot to ask a student to digest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Excellent Approximations and Lying to Children [I]t\u2019s true that Euclidian geometry is only a special case of the mroe general geometry of spacetime. But it\u2019s an amazingly good approximation to any situation you will ever encounter. Which is why we &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/11793\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}