Information sources and physics teaching

Moderator's note: Thread spun off due to topic/subforum change.

There's been times when a small bit of inaccurate information had derailed my understanding for years, believe it or not.

syfry said:

There's been times when a small bit of inaccurate information had derailed my understanding for years, believe it or not.

Then read tetxbooks, not Quora.

Vanadium 50 said:

Then read tetxbooks, not Quora.

Might sound like a simple solution but why are people spending great amounts of money on classes if textbooks are so informative on their own?

I helped a friend with a chapter in their college accounting textbook. They had long been a bank teller who's good at finances so maybe they figured an easy credit, but they were failing to make any substantial progress even when staying after class for extra time with the professor.

So I took a look, "it's accounting, adding up numbers, how hard can this be?" and might as well been reading an alien language. Had to read the chapter a few times while asking my friend some questions about how certain things work in banks and ledgers for tracking a funding history, then after again silently reading the chapter and finally getting a grasp of its lessons, I read the chapter out loud from beginning to end but in 100% conversational language, swapping to everyday words at each instance of jargon.

Thought not much about it until learning that my friend got an A on their test. It was the beginning of my realization of something wrong in how we teach in textbooks and classrooms. (pieced that to earlier experiences in helping people in class who like me had struggled with basic algebra, but once I had overcome the struggle with the teacher using analogies and tricks to gain a better insight, then subconsciously I'd sort of know what people's stumbling blocks would be and stay clear of those entirely)

Then years later browsing my friend's anatomy and physiology textbook, it seemed a hundred times more difficult than the accounting textbook from earlier. But they excelled at it. If they instead were to have had difficulty, then I'd have been almost useless to help. (later on, I did help another friend to study for a masseuse license they'd get by quizzing them on a ridiculously difficult textbook filled with jargon, but my main strategy was to use analogies that'd remind them of the words (purely tricks for memorization), even though I didn't understand much of it and would soon forget most of it, my friend did well on the test)

In between all of that, science had already been one of my hardest classes I'd barely passed in school, although the idea of science was personally thrilling. I was the type of kid who'd go to the library for the entire day and leave with the max amount of books you can borrow, in each arm, of many sorts from science to fiction, adventure, and science fiction. But I was also separated in school into slower classes with a handful of students in a big school district, for my diagnosed learning disability.

Anyway, one day in the future while lamenting my utter lack of knowledge in science from how personally hard it is to learn, my one friend then opened a new world by introducing me to a book by Brian Greene. From there, they also were a tremendous help by recommending their favorite teachers for teaching at the community college. I enrolled purely for learning, instead of any career, and got to ask the teachers as many questions as I could. (geology, ecology, which were also filled with jargon but the teachers and the hands on interaction were helpful and I finally got an A in a science class)

Fast forward to today, Wikipedia science is often personally the most indecipherable jumble of jargon that when tapping any of the words for more info it'll instead lead to a long stream of page after page trying to understand each new word, deeper and deeper like in the movie inception, but I'd instead somehow end up right at the beginning again without learning a single thing and more confused than ever.

Now, will a textbook be any different? After many previous experiences, hopefully it's more clear why I haven't bothered to buy a physics textbook, and instead seek out the knowledge from people who can explain the science. But not everyone who sounds like they know what they're talking about, really does know. Or they perpetuate some of the misconceptions. Lesson learned: a lot of inaccuracy is floating around.

syfry said:

why are people spending great amounts of money on classes if textbooks are so informative on their own?

(1) Because many people need the input of taking a class, just learning direct from the textbook with no interaction with a professor, a TA, and other students doesn't work for them. (Note, however, that how to learn is itself a learned skill; you can learn how to learn direct from a textbook without needing to pay for a class. Unfortunately very few if any educational institutions teach this skill, although they should.)

(2) You can't get a degree by just reading a textbook; you have to take classes. And many people want a degree as a credential.

PeterDonis said:

(1) Because many people need the input of taking a class, just learning direct from the textbook with no interaction with a professor, a TA, and other students doesn't work for them.

(2) You can't get a degree by just reading a textbook; you have to take classes. And many people want a degree as a credential.

Vanadium 50 there's why a textbook isn't the answer.

syfry said:

Vanadium 50 there's why a textbook isn't the answer.

@Vanadium 50 was answering a different question: why you should learn from a textbook instead of Quora. Go pay for a class at a university and see if they are using Quora to teach from.

PeterDonis said:

@Vanadium 50 was answering a different question: why you should learn from a textbook instead of Quora. Go pay for a class at a university and see if they are using Quora to teach from.

That the founder of these forums to their own admission hasn't been that good at physics and had founded these forums as a sort of extra credit to pass the class, while the existence of the forums is hugely beneficial for students who struggle with the teaching, not sure that going deep into student debt purely for learning that has a track record of failing many who try, is really such an enticing sell.

syfry said:

That the founder of these forums to their own admission hasn't been that good at physics and had founded these forums as a sort of extra credit to pass the class, while the existence of the forums is hugely beneficial for students who struggle with the teaching, not sure that going deep into student debt purely for learning that has a track record of failing many who try, is really such an enticing sell.

What's your point? PF is not intended as a substitute for learning science from whatever combination of textbooks, peer-reviewed papers, and classes works best for you. PF is intended to help you in that endeavor, not to replace it.

Which is a completely separate issue from the issue of what sources your learning should be based on. You'll note that I said "textbooks and peer-reviewed papers" above, not Quora. That's the case regardless of whether and to what extent you learn from textbooks and peer-reviewed papers on your own, in the context of classes, with the help of PF, etc., etc. That's why I pointed out that @Vanadium 50 was answering a different question.

PeterDonis said:

What's your point? PF is not intended as a substitute for learning science from whatever combination of textbooks, peer-reviewed papers, and classes works best for you.

Maybe people forget that not everyone has the finances and the time for college. That's the case for a lot of people. Possibly most.

Not to mention, purely for the knowledge. It'd be even more a burden if someone isn't planning to put that into a career. Well, depending where you live, might make a difference.

Some of us make the best we can out of what's available within our means. I looked up info hoping for an explanation that provided some insight, then after searching a few times and failing to find any insightful knowledge, asked here for clarification about a few words.

syfry said:

Maybe people forget that not everyone has the finances and the time for college.

And for those people, learning the skill of learning things without having to pay for classes would be a good investment of their time.

I still don't understand your point, though. Are you saying PF should give all those people the equivalent of a college education for free? If not, what exactly are you saying?

syfry said:

I looked up info hoping for an explanation that provided some insight, then after searching a few times and failing to find any insightful knowledge, asked here for clarification about a few words.

I understand that. What you should understand is that where you looked up info to begin with was not the best place. You should be looking up info in textbooks or peer-reviewed papers. Plenty of both are available for free online; there is no need to pay for them, and certainly no need to pay a university to take a class to get them. In fact, many universities now have their course materials, videos of lectures, and exercises with solutions available online for free.

PeterDonis said:

And for those people, learning the skill of learning things without having to pay for classes would be a good investment of their time.

I still don't understand your point, though. Are you saying PF should give all those people the equivalent of a college education for free? If not, what exactly are you saying?I understand that. What you should understand is that where you looked up info to begin with was not the best place. You should be looking up info in textbooks or peer-reviewed papers. Plenty of both are available for free online; there is no need to pay for them, and certainly no need to pay a university to take a class to get them. In fact, many universities now have their course materials, videos of lectures, and exercises with solutions available online for free.

Quora and more are places to visit after the official places don't work. Already mentioned in my earlier long reply the problem with textbooks.

Yes I also thought those free courses were great, and the gesture is fantastic, although it's like you said, "just learning from a textbook with no interaction with a professor, a TA, and other students doesn't work for them".

Would love such a skill to learn from a textbook directly, but not everyone has that skill or knows how to get it.

Not expecting the forums to be a replacement for college, first, because it's already got its own purpose. And, frankly you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, so they say.

Someone will make an "explain like you're Feynman" type of forum, or people who foresee value in visuals for teaching and discovery will start taking science into a more universally spread direction.

Also perhaps someone like me could crowdfund to hire a team of tutors and animation artists to teach a struggling learner way into the heart of physics and to livestream the entire journey while answering requests to elaborate by the audience, and freeing the entire thing of accurate and visual simplicity by a creative commons license.

Curious, how confident is everyone about the today's level of science knowledge in people and value placed upon it? Because it's harder to achieve without people directly experiencing science.

Maybe worth it to consider that the current methods which haven't solved the problem could use a thoughtful review about effectiveness.

syfry said:

Quora and more are places to visit after the official places don't work.

And yet you say you have repeatedly gotten inaccurate information that has derailed your understanding for years. Perhaps that has something to do with the places you go to visit?

Also, exactly what "official places" have you tried that don't work? What was the problem?

syfry said:

Already mentioned in my earlier long reply the problem with textbooks.

What you described isn't a problem with textbooks. It's a problem with your expectations. You have an expectation that if you can just find the right magical source of information, your mind will be instantly illuminated and you will gain complete understanding. That's a myth.

The people here at PF who are trying to help you in this thread spent decades learning this material. For example, I have been studying physics for more than 40 years now. And I don't even have a university degree in physics. (I have one in Nuclear Engineering, so I do have a university background in some aspects of physics, but I have never taken a class in, for example, General Relativity or Quantum Field Theory.) That's because physics takes time to learn; there are no short cuts and there are no magic methods that let you understand complex topics with minimal time and effort.

syfry said:

I also thought those free courses were great, and the gesture is fantastic, although it's like you said, "just learning from a textbook with no interaction with a professor, a TA, and other students doesn't work for them".

Would love such a skill to learn from a textbook directly, but not everyone has that skill or knows how to get it.

Do you know how I got it? Practice. Nobody ever taught me how to learn things on my own without taking a class. I taught myself how to do it over a period of many years. You can do the same. I said educational institutions should teach this skill, but the fact is that they don't, and I did not say it's impossible to acquire the skill without educational institutions teaching it.

syfry said:

Not expecting the forums to be a replacement for college

Ok, good.

syfry said:

first, because it's already got its own purpose.

Yes.

syfry said:

frankly you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, so they say.

Whenever you find yourself repeating a platitude and ending with "so they say", you should question whether it is actually true.

syfry said:

how confident is everyone about the today's level of science knowledge in people and value placed upon it?

In the majority of people? I don't think there has ever been a majority of people who have had a good working knowledge of science, except in some cases in particular narrow domains connected with their job. I don't think today is any different from the past in that respect.

syfry said:

it's harder to achieve without people directly experiencing science.

You directly experience science in thousands of ways every day. You just don't realize it. Every time you use GPS, you are directly experiencing the validity of General Relativity (not to mention huge swathes of other disciplines that go into engineering the GPS system). Every time you use a computer, you are directly experiencing the validity of quantum mechanics (not to mention huge swathes of other domains that go into engineering computers). Our modern world literally runs on science, and would grind to a halt if science did not work.

However, what all that actually illustrates is that directly experiencing science working is not the same as understanding how and why science produces the things I described above, along with countless others. That is what takes many years of sustained time and effort to learn. And contrary to the claims of educational institutions, nobody has a reliable formula for learning it. Everyone who has attained a good understanding of science has done it using a large helping of individualized learning that worked for them but wouldn't work for other people.

That said, one good general rule is this: before you even try to learn the how and why of science, you first have to learn what it is. What do our best current scientific theories actually say? And the best sources for that are textbooks and peer-reviewed papers. The reason you got into trouble reading a Quora thread is that Quora does not have the explicit purpose of telling you what our best current scientific theories actually say, using a process that is designed for that outcome, including checks by various experts, etc., etc. Textbooks do have that purpose and are produced by a process that is designed for that outcome. They aren't perfect, but your odds are much better using them.

syfry said:

Maybe worth it to consider that the current methods which haven't solved the problem could use a thoughtful review about effectiveness.

As far as I can tell, the "problem" you see is not solvable at all. It's an inherent property of science, which cannot be changed no matter what new teaching methods people invent, that it is complex and takes years of sustained time and effort to learn. That's because science is trying to describe and explain nature, which doesn't care how complex it appears to us humans or how much time and effort is required for us to understand it.

syfry said:

will a textbook be any different?

Short answer: yes. Textbooks do vary in quality and approach, but that's why there are always multiple textbooks covering any given subject area.

Obvious next question: if you've never actually bothered to read a textbook, what can you possibly be basing your opinion of them on?

syfry said:

Lesson learned: a lot of inaccuracy is floating around.

Apparently you learned the wrong lesson, like the cat in Mark Twain's story who, having sat once on a hot stove lid, would not sit on a hot stove lid again--but would also not sit on a cold one either.

The right lesson to learn is: you need to be careful in choosing your sources.

PeterDonis said:

And yet you say you have repeatedly gotten inaccurate information that has derailed your understanding for years. Perhaps that has something to do with the places you go to visit?

Also, exactly what "official places" have you tried that don't work? What was the problem?

Out of time so I'll return later. Real quick:

I see how my previous comment could've been misinterpreted. Here's its beginning:

"There's been times when a small bit of inaccurate information had derailed my understanding"

There's been times. I avoid those now by triple checking with people about what I learn. A single inaccuracy could derail my understanding for years. That's more accurate of what happened.

As to official places, I do visit the places that paywall access. And have listened to university lectures.

It's a problem with your expectations. You have an expectation that if you can just find the right magical source of information, your mind will be instantly illuminated and you will gain complete understanding.

That's a myth about my expectations.

It's an inherent property of science, which cannot be changed no matter what new teaching methods people invent

Ironically, there doesn't seem be a law of physics that actually verifies that.

Is there a citation?

Yes it's extremely difficult to learn, but we don't know if it's possible or impossible.

Judging by how people do make a breakthrough with the right teacher, I think it's worth testing to see how true it is.

syfry said:

That's a myth about my expectations.

Perhaps. But when you say something like this...

syfry said:

Judging by how people do make a breakthrough with the right teacher

...it's hard not to wonder.

Since you asked about citations, perhaps you'll find this one from Gibbon of interest: "But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."

syfry said:

Yes it's extremely difficult to learn, but we don't know if it's possible or impossible.

I never said learning was impossible. I just said it takes sustained time and effort. I also said being able to learn on your own, without having to depend on things like taking classes, is a learned skill--but again it takes sustained time and effort.

PeterDonis said:

Since you asked about citations, perhaps you'll find this one from Gibbon of interest: "But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."

Dang, thought it was gonna be a peer reviewed paper. Was looking forward to reading that.

Ah well.

Gonna elaborate on my previous points which apparently could've been clearer but I had written it in a hurry:

I never said learning was impossible. I just said it takes sustained time and effort. I also said being able to learn on your own, without having to depend on things like taking classes, is a learned skill--but again it takes sustained time and effort.

So yes I agree. To clarify what hypothesis is worth testing, it's the idea that science can be made universally approachable with an accurate simplicity.

I'd seek scientific advice on how to properly conduct a study with scientific controls and sufficient people, etc.

But that's the context.

If that's what you were replying to with:

As far as I can tell, the "problem" you see is not solvable at all. It's an inherent property of science, which cannot be changed no matter what new teaching methods people invent, that it is complex and takes years of sustained time and effort to learn.

Then my reply to that was:

"Ironically, there doesn't seem be a law of physics that actually verifies that."

Such as, is there a peer review study that's verified the problem isn't solvable. As far as I can tell, the laws of physics don't prevent it.

So my next quote is addressing specifically that:

"Yes it's extremely difficult to learn, but we don't know if it's possible or impossible."

Physics is very difficult to learn. But we don't know if that's impossible to solve so it's worth testing to see.

My quoted phrasing was unclear. And hopefully my rephrasing is better.

Now my next quote continues addressing the same idea:

"Judging by how people do make a breakthrough with the right teacher, I think it's worth testing to see how true it is."

Judging from instances such as when a student who's been failing a subject has then quickly made astounding progress after a great teacher had a transformative effect on them, it's clear that presentation is a potential game changer for learning, and it's worth testing that on physics. (in a widely witnessed way is my choice of doing something like that so people can see the results and inspect all aspects of the study)

Now, this isn't a discussion of wishful thinking or magical whatnots.

There's a saying at many jobs, work smarter not harder. Referring to physical labor, but it can easily apply to mental effort.

Often at the job when they show us a better way of doing something that we've clumsily struggled with for years, we're amazed at how simple it is and from then on we do that job so much easier. One example is we use a mini sledgehammer to drive in a huge metal pin through a great steel anchor. We'd constantly hammer that thing with really solid hits because the heavy pin is tough to drive through. One year a contractor had stepped in and said watch this, giving a few wee gentle taps to the pin until we heard a sudden change in pitch in the tapping, then WHAM WHAM and pin went right in.

Saved a lot of time and energy from then on.

So many such examples, truly mind blowing.

Bet most of us have witnessed certain teachers who did something similar with a clumsily struggling student, except with their mental effort.

That's the type of thinking I'm bringing to the idea about physics.

syfry said:

To clarify what hypothesis is worth testing, it's the idea that science can be made universally approachable with an accurate simplicity.

This is way too vague to be testable. What counts as "science"? What counts as "universally approachable"? How do we determine whether we have succeeded at doing this? Does literally every human on the planet have to reach whatever threshold of understanding we define? Every high school graduate? Every college graduate?

Also, what does "accurate simplicity" mean? What if those two things are incompatible? How do we balance the two?

syfry said:

Dang, thought it was gonna be a peer reviewed paper. Was looking forward to reading that.

Your snark is misplaced. We do not really have a science of how to teach science (or indeed how to teach in general--we have an academic field called "education" but even if we allow it to be called a "science" by courtesy, it is a very, very immature one and has a long, long way to go). But we do have a lot of records of the experience of people who have tried to teach things to others and have had various levels of success. It would seem foolish to ignore all of that and insist on a peer-reviewed paper when the field is so immature, scientifically speaking.

syfry said:

is there a peer review study that's verified the problem isn't solvable.

No peer-reviewed study could ever verify any such thing in this domain. If you want a field where things can actually be shown to be impossible, try math, not education. (And then remember Bertrand Russell's famous saying that, as far as the theorems of math are certain, they do not refer to reality.)

syfry said:

Bet most of us have witnessed certain teachers who did something similar with a clumsily struggling student, except with their mental effort.

That's the type of thinking I'm bringing to the idea about physics.

The way to do that is to try teaching people physics and see what works and what doesn't. You yourself couldn't do that, of course, but have you asked people who have? Physics professors, for example? Do they have any useful information about what works and what doesn't? Could any of it be generalized systematically?

PeterDonis said:

This is way too vague to be testable. What counts as "science"? What counts as "universally approachable"? How do we determine whether we have succeeded at doing this? Does literally every human on the planet have to reach whatever threshold of understanding we define? Every high school graduate? Every college graduate?

Phrases such as universally approachable are temporary placeholders. They'd be defined by qualifications: hypothetically, if we were to say 80% of people demonstrate a clear understanding of the learning material.

A clear understanding of what people would normally learn at school.

Pick a grade level for a field of study, mainly from a selection of Earth sciences, physics, cosmology, and the type of maths a student would learn for those.

Redo the learning material, upgrade it with our standards for accurate simplicity.

Select random people who'd easily fail any test from that field if they were to blindly take the test, because they haven't ever learned the material.

Also, what does "accurate simplicity" mean? What if those two things are incompatible? How do we balance the two?

Testing will reveal any incompatibility. And how to balance accuracy with simplicity. That's the point of testing! (I'm writing in good humor so please take the exclamation points as merely friendly emphasis, since tone is hard to read in a writing)

PeterDonis said:

Your snark is misplaced. We do not really have a science of how to teach science (or indeed how to teach in general--we have an academic field called "education" but even if we allow it to be called a "science" by courtesy, it is a very, very immature one and has a long, long way to go). But we do have a lot of records of the experience of people who have tried to teach things to others and have had various levels of success. It would seem foolish to ignore all of that and insist on a peer-reviewed paper when the field is so immature, scientifically speaking.

I really was looking forward when noticed the link. No snark intended. Apologies for seeming that way.

PeterDonis said:

The way to do that is to try teaching people physics and see what works and what doesn't. You yourself couldn't do that, of course, but have you asked people who have? Physics professors, for example? Do they have any useful information about what works and what doesn't? Could any of it be generalized systematically?

Yes, definitely would involve physics teachers.

It might seem like a moonshot, and it really is. Most people who try to simplify seem to make a crucial error in thinking that it'll be simple to simplify because they'd be using simpler language, but their reasoning is way incorrect. If I were to guess a difficulty, it'd be at least 10 times harder to simplify than to create a lesson directly teaching all the technical info. If you aren't thinking it'll be absurdly difficult to simplify, then your simplicity will easily become an oversimplified, useless waste of time that actually made learning as difficult, if not more.

My goals are simply filling a role that doesn't seem to be such a priority for leaders in science.

Let's define the leaders of science as the people who make happen the structure of peer review, of consensus, of the official jargon for science words or the official naming conventions, every position that leads to lessons in textbook in classrooms.

What can they have prioritized?

Immediately to mind comes things that should've existed 20 years ago with all of the advances in technology.

Definitely some sort of UX engineer for maths and science lessons to completely transform how we learn them to naturally accelerate learning.

Also a consensus to champion the most accurate textbooks every year.

Do the same for textbooks that were part of a solid increase in test scores, so they're demonstrating commitment to excellence in results, going above and beyond. And more schools likely would naturally order those.

Why is it up to YouTube channels and random websites to instead make digestible the existing landscape offered by leaders of science?

Maybe a percentage of the seemingly inherent difficulty is a result of where priorities lay.

PeterDonis said:

Your snark is misplaced. We do not really have a science of how to teach science (or indeed how to teach in general--we have an academic field called "education" but even if we allow it to be called a "science" by courtesy, it is a very, very immature one and has a long, long way to go). But we do have a lot of records of the experience of people who have tried to teach things to others and have had various levels of success. It would seem foolish to ignore all of that and insist on a peer-reviewed paper when the field is so immature, scientifically speaking.

I guess, my colleagues from the physics-didactics institute would violently protest against this statement. There are even entire journals with proper peer review about Physics Education Research, e.g.,

https://journals.aps.org/prper/

I myself am also somewhat critical against the outcomes of these efforts, but in recent years it has approved. During my undergraduate studies in Germany (1991-1997), I thought, physics (and also mathematics) didactics is a disaster. At this time they preached to the teacher students that knowing the science is not important but all that counts is didactics, as if you could teach anything that you haven't understood to quite a mature level, that goes beyond the level of what you are supposed teach. A good grasp of the subject, in my opinion, is a necessary but of course by far not sufficient condition. Also there was a lot of "cargo-cult science" (a la Feynman) around: I still remember a mathematics-didactics colloquium, where the speaker mumbled about the cognition psychology of teaching the solutions of quadratic equations. After the talk I dared to ask, how finally one should teach, how to solve a quadratic equation. This he never answered in his talk. His answer was pretty surprising, because he admitted he doesn't know himself, how to solve quadratic equations. I suggested the standard way with "supplementing the square" (is this the right expression in English). This he considered "dangerous". After that I politely thanked him for his answers.

Today, at least in the physics-didactics community, they are a somewhat more scientific/empirical approach (at least partially). E.g., they try different teaching concepts for a well-defined topic like introductory classical mechanics, where it turned out that the usual approach by starting with one-dimensional problems only leads to much less understanding than to start with vectors and at least two-dimensional problems, because then the difference between scalar and vector quantities is studied early on and the understanding of basic concepts is much better.

There are still also counter-examples, where the standard teaching paradigms seem to me pretty questionable. One example is the teaching of DC as well as AC circuits in various high-school levels. Almost always they use the "water pipe analogy" with pressure as the analogue of voltage and water current with electrical current. What's completely forgotten is the truely important difference that electromagnetism deals with the electromagnetic field, and if it comes to how energy is transported the water-pipe analogy is entirely wrong. If you think about it with the water-pipe analogy, i.e., using the (wrong) idea that the conduction electrons carry the energy as (hot) water transports heat energy, leads to the question, how can the light switch on (almost) immediately considering that the conduction electrons crawl with a velocity of around 1mm/s through the wire? Of course it's the em. field in the free space between the different parts of the wires making up the circuit that transports the energy and this occurs with the speed of light rather than the drift velocity of the electrons.

syfry said:

Yes, definitely would involve physics teachers.

I'm teaching future physics teachers about theoretical physics :-).

syfry said:

It might seem like a moonshot, and it really is. Most people who try to simplify seem to make a crucial error in thinking that it'll be simple to simplify because they'd be using simpler language, but their reasoning is way incorrect. If I were to guess a difficulty, it'd be at least 10 times harder to simplify than to create a lesson directly teaching all the technical info. If you aren't thinking it'll be absurdly difficult to simplify, then your simplicity will easily become an oversimplified, useless waste of time that actually made learning as difficult, if not more.

Indeed, the key issue is, how to simplify the subject at a given level. Einstein famously put it: explain things as simple as possible but not simpler.

I can talk only for Germany, where we have (once more) a big crisis in the outcomes of our school education, and not only at the high-school but even at the elementary-school level. Around 25% after finishing 4th grade (the end of elementary school in Germany) the students are not able to understand texts they read nor are they able to solve simple arithmetic problems. This is really alarming.

In the STEM subjects interest declines, and as a result at the university level a quite high percentage of students quits before finishing even their BSc degree (in physics it's around 50%). Studies show that the main reason is mathematics. This is no surprise since the way they teach math at the high schools is pretty inadequate. They teach the pupils to solve some standard types of problems without a true understanding of the concepts. There's no teaching of the fun of finding things out and the creativeness in finding solutions for unknown problems. No wonder that many pupils find math boring and ununderstandable.

syfry said:

My goals are simply filling a role that doesn't seem to be such a priority for leaders in science.

Let's define the leaders of science as the people who make happen the structure of peer review, of consensus, of the official jargon for science words or the official naming conventions, every position that leads to lessons in textbook in classrooms.

We have all this, we are evaluating ourselves to death!

syfry said:

What can they have prioritized?

Immediately to mind comes things that should've existed 20 years ago with all of the advances in technology.

Definitely some sort of UX engineer for maths and science lessons to completely transform how we learn them to naturally accelerate learning.

Also a consensus to champion the most accurate textbooks every year.

Do the same for textbooks that were part of a solid increase in test scores, so they're demonstrating commitment to excellence in results, going above and beyond. And more schools likely would naturally order those.

Why is it up to YouTube channels and random websites to instead make digestible the existing landscape offered by leaders of science?

Maybe a percentage of the seemingly inherent difficulty is a result of where priorities lay.

Do you really think that YouTube channels do a good job? One of the first things you have to teach the incoming freshmen students at the university is, how to learn, using all the formats for learning offered them at the university, i.e., good old lectures and exercise/tutorial sessions and the newer "e-learning" formats. Most of the students are not aware that they must get active, repeating the stuff covered in the lectures and then solving a lot of problems, learning together in a group, discussing the stuff among themselves and with the professors. The main obstacle is that all these learning techniques are not taught at the high schools anymore. As I already said, that's most obvious on math. We cannot rely on the level of high-school mass of 20-30 years ago (where it was already also not that good!). The universities have to offer more and more introductory courses before the 1st semester starts to bring all students to the expected level of high-school math, but of course you cannot substitute in a few weeks what's missed in 13 years of high-school education.

@syfry You mention some bad info that derailed [sic] your understanding for years. This is a little hard for me to grasp unless you had long years between your learning experiences. Why wasn't it discovered sooner? Also, it would be helpful to know what information this was. Was it incorrect, poorly presented, or ambiguous?

You also mentioned a learning disability. This makes it additionally difficult to discuss your issues that you seem to want to apply to a large group of poor learners. So has this disability been evaluated? Perhaps there are ways of ameliorating the problem that might be easier than trying to change the way physics is taught.

We all have a set of skills that allow us to do some things better than others. Some can be enhanced others not as much. I'm a relatively slow reader. I took a speed reading course with little improvement.

syfry said:

if we were to say 80% of people demonstrate a clear understanding of the learning material.

How would they demonstrate it? You talk about testing. What kind of testing? Administered by whom? Graded by whom? Who makes up the tests? Who decides what material is in them? Who decides what grade counts as "demonstrating a clear understanding"?

The reason I ask all these questions is that I don't think they have unique answers. Every university has its own curriculum for every physics subject area, including its own tests. And that's not even starting on other education alternatives. But without unique answers, what do you do?

vanhees71 said:

I guess, my colleagues from the physics-didactics institute would violently protest against this statement.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying nobody knows anything about teaching physics, or that things cannot be learned and teaching cannot be improved. I am saying that, from a scientific standpoint, teaching is a very immature science, simply because it's a relatively new field, you can't do controlled experiments in it (you can't stamp out a thousand identical students and try various teaching methods on them and measure and compare the outcomes), and there are a huge number of confounding variables that you have no way of knowing. That doesn't mean we should not try to do what we can. But it does mean, IMO, that we should be very careful about our expectations of what can be accomplished.

Of course, humanities are not exact sciences. This doesn't mean that you can't investigate in an empirically solid way, which method works best on average. For the single student it's anyway a very individual thing, what works best for him or her.

PeterDonis said:

teaching is a very immature science, simply because it's a relatively new field,

Learning/teaching/education research is not that new well over a hundred years old. Physics teaching research began in the late 1950's. It is a branch of psychology with a little neurobiology thrown it. Since it is behavioral as @vanhess71 noted it is an individual thing. Unlike physical differences, which we can easily see that one size does not fit all we have not learned to tailor education very well to the individual characteristics of the students.

Perhaps someday we may develop a method of evaluating these characteristics along with teaching techniques that fit them. Maybe the techniques will not be a perfect fit requiring the student to make some adjustments to optimally benefit. It may be up to AI to do this.

What I also find interesting is to investigate students' understanding of concepts. It's interesting what comes out. You'd never come to the idea, how some misconceptions arise. E.g., after a typical QM 1 lecture many students think that all states there are are energy eigen states and that quantum systems are always in such states. I'd never thought that students could come to such a conclusion, but if you think about it, in this typical courses you have a pretty short introductory phase, where the general dynamics is discussed briefly, and it's also not so easy to get familiar with both the mathematical concepts of Hilbert spaces, the Schrödinger equation, eigenstates and eigenvalues and all that and also the physics concepts. Then a large part of the lecture is indeed about calculating energy eigenstates for various problems (free particle, potential pot, different finite potential steps/wells in 1D, harmonic oscillator, and finally the hydrogen atom; often also the elastic-scattering problem is discussed in terms of energy eigenfunctions). That may easily lead to the said misconception. Reading such studies can help you to know about such dangers of misconception and try to avoid them by adapting your teaching etc.

gleem said:

@syfry You mention some bad info that derailed [sic] your understanding for years. This is a little hard for me to grasp unless you had long years between your learning experiences. Why wasn't it discovered sooner? Also, it would be helpful to know what information this was. Was it incorrect, poorly presented, or ambiguous?

You also mentioned a learning disability. This makes it additionally difficult to discuss your issues that you seem to want to apply to a large group of poor learners. So has this disability been evaluated? Perhaps there are ways of ameliorating the problem that might be easier than trying to change the way physics is taught.

We all have a set of skills that allow us to do some things better than others. Some can be enhanced others not as much. I'm a relatively slow reader. I took a speed reading course with little improvement.

An example of bad info is something we've all seen, about gravity warping a dip in space. Gravity as the cause of gravity, and that was hard to wrap my mind around.

Usually, if I can follow a series of causes and effects back to a beginning, then it's so much easier to absorb the knowledge. Like perhaps a rube goldberg machine.

When a former physics teacher with a great YouTube channel explained how the popular visual of gravity is inaccurate, merely knowing so had removed a big obstacle, and then when they replied that gravity is bending time a lot more than space, that further enabled me to add another piece to the cause and effect mental playthrough to start gaining a more logical grasp.

The playthrough implied that gravity would bend your timeline toward the center of its source, so that'd be your destination unless if something halted your journey (e.g. the Earth's surface) or if you were to gain enough energy in the opposite direction. It's likely still inaccurate, but at least now I could better reason out what questions to ask to gain a more accurate understanding of gravity.

The ADHD and more was evaluated in kindergarten and they moved me out to a special school for it in 1st grade. From then on that was the pattern off and on as we moved from one city to another.

Each school year in any normal class had a regular pattern: start way behind all students, struggling with everything (my writing assignments full of red marks) and needing the most extra attention, then at some point if something clicked then I'd accelerate toward the best in class after some months. But not always. Science was an exception, barely passing the subject.

Then in high school, started to realize I could 'speedrun' the struggling students in whichever parts of basic algebra I had managed to finally understand after my own struggle with it.

After high school is when I fully realized the knack for speedrunning people through the stuff I've learned after having personally struggled with it.

Then spent years trying to distill that speedrunning mechanism, how the method might be replicated.

Ok will return later after get some sleep, and will then reply to more comments.

If a single pop-science explanation can keep you confused for years, why do you think that an explanation you like happens to be correct? How do you know history is not repeating itself?

If you don't know the topic, how do you know if an explanation is good enough?

Normally, we judge how well we know a topic by how well we can apply that knowledge to new situations - i.e. working problems. If you don't work problems, how do you know if you know something or merely think you do?

syfry said:

gravity is bending time a lot more than space

You do realize that this is, at best an oversimplification on par with the rubber sheet oversimplification, right?

Relativity says what direction is "time" and what directions are "space" is observer dependent. So it's not clear exactly what this pithy line is saying. One could say that the apparent force of gravity is in the direction of the gradient of time dilation, and that is more accurate. One could also say that the path of a falling apple in spacetime is predominantly along the time direction and so curvature in that direction is more evident than in others. That's certainly more true, but not everything is a falling apple: if one were to base an approximation on apples and apply it to light, they would be off by a factor of2: one coule argue with the same degree of (in)accuracy that gravity bends light, half in time and half in space.

These pithy phrases have some value, but they are no substitute for understanding the quantitative behavior of gravity.