[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
[Fhsst-physics] Comments on Gerald's section
From: |
Mark Horner |
Subject: |
[Fhsst-physics] Comments on Gerald's section |
Date: |
Wed, 15 Jun 2005 22:54:10 -0700 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050509 Debian/1.7.6-1ubuntu2.1 |
Hi Gerald
Sorry about the delay - from now on add an error of +3 days to any
statement I make about when I'll get something done.
Right - down to details!
Firstly things are looking good - I think you've done a great job! I
like that you have examples for all the gas laws, there is some history
for everything which is nice for interested kids and there isn't too
much writing - pages of straight text just intimidate them.
I have some specific suggestions (hopefully you will find them
constructive - feel free to disagree with me - and if anyone else has
contrary suggestions please send them in):
- in the beginning you mention the melting temperatures of a few
substances in the text - it might be nice to give them a little table
with a few common and some not-so-common substance - say carbon because
we are carbon based, gold because its key to the SA economy, copper
because they all know copper wire. Not too many - maybe 4 or 5 very
different substances just so they get a feel for the scope of
temperatures etc.
- we need to define very simply and clearly intensive and extensive
properties because that often confuses people - a definition list might
work - to make sure that they are clear that things are either intensive
or extensive and what the difference is - the list would make it stand
out more. Subtle use of language will be lost on many weaker students so
the we need to choose important things to stand out.
- for the equation definitions - maybe mention at the beginning of the
equation of state chapter that there are three laws they are going to
learn about just so its clear that they know which 3 they are combining
to make the EOS.
- could you make a definition block for each of the equations similar to
the ones in the momentum chapter (pg 132) in the physics book:
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst/fhsstphy.pdf
I really like the real world examples like the pressure in a divers ear.
- Under Kinetic theory of gasses - no problem with the first paragraph
and we are hoping to have some stuff about scientific method early on
which it will reinforce. I think we must explain somewhere the word
"empirical" - I am not yet sure when its first use in the book will be
but I think that your section is the first that has it right now.
I just imagined tht "Any scientific law is an empirical genaralization
..." might just be too much to handle unless they are clear on empirical
and generalization.
The same goes for a postulate - could you just put a quick explanation
in of what a postulate is - it may be removed/moved later but for now
its not used anywhere else (maybe maths not sure).
- Under pressure of a gas - could you change the curly deltas to capital
deltas - thats whats been used in other chapters.
Otherwise I think things are looking fine. Your language usage might be
a bit too high - I need to think about it carefully - we made the
decision that the language usage could improve over the course of the
book and this chapter will come later on. Notice that we've tried to be
extremely simple in the Forces->Gravitation chapters. If you can easily
make some statements simpler or shorter then it won't hurt but I think
you are probably ok.
Thanks for a great job, its really coming on.
Cheers,
Mark
___________________________________________________________
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com
[Prev in Thread] |
Current Thread |
[Next in Thread] |
- [Fhsst-physics] Comments on Gerald's section,
Mark Horner <=