We need everyone in science, right?

Because of my past experiences, I have a very conflicted relationship with the perceived need to get undergraduates involved in research. I also have a very conflicted relationship with coursework, mostly for the same reasons. These conflicted feelings clash when it comes to the issue of graduate school admissions. By some accounts, physics and astronomy […]

Conceptual Understanding in Introductory Physics I: Models, Testability, and Falsifiability

This post begins a series that was inspired by Grant Wiggins’ post on conceptual understanding in mathematics. Wiggins presents a list of thirteen questions aimed mainly at high school students “who have passed all traditional math courses through algebra and geometry.” These questions reminded of a list of about twenty similar questions I have been compiling (mostly […]