Xref: csiph.com rec.arts.sf.written:424201 sci.physics:524646 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,sci.physics Path: csiph.com!optima2.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!kithrup.com!djheydt From: djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) Subject: Re: green stars Message-ID: Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2015 14:39:03 GMT References: <560E3D7D.3AA6@ix.netcom.com> Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ld. X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Lines: 104 In article , jmfbahciv wrote: >Dorothy J Heydt wrote: >> In article , >> jmfbahciv wrote: >>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote: >>>> In article , >>>> William December Starr wrote: >>>>>In article , >>>>>djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) said: >>>>> >>>>>> I managed to get an A in my one physics course (Physics 10, aka >>>>>> Bonehead Physics), but I do not understand anything past Newton. >>>>>> I haven't had to. I take it on faith. >>>>> >>>>>Did you drop a '1' off the end of that, or was the course really >>>>>"Physics [ten]?" >>>> >>>> Yes. >>>> >>>> Its official title, I think, was "physics for Humanities Majors". >>>> Everybody enrolled in the College of Letters and Sciences, who >>>> wasn't actually majoring in a science, had to take it. In a >>>> similar way, those majoring in math or sciences, if they couldn't >>>> pass a basic entrance exam in written English (in which case >>>> they'd take the standard lower-division English courses like the >>>> rest of us) would take English 10, which of course was called >>>> Bonehead English. >>>> >>>> Mind you, this was nearly sixty years ago; I don't know what they >>>> do now. >>>> >>>When I went to college, we were required to take an Honors Physics >>>course which was real physics without using calculus. The art >>>majors were not interested in the course until they figured out >>>it helped them with their art which was mostly drawing and >>>painting. >> >> We did not, thank heaven, have to use calculus. Just algebra. >> At which I was not very good either. >> >> I know I've told this story before, but it's been a while. If >> you remember it from last time, hit 'n' now. >> >> I was living in a rooming house where we did our own cooking. >> There was a kitchen on the ground floor and another (small) >> kitchen on the third floor, where I lived. One of my housemates >> was not only taking Physics 10 when I was, but we had the same >> section with the same TA. So we got the same problem sets, which >> the TA handed out at the Tuesday section and got back at the >> Thursday section. >> >> So every Wednesday evening she and I would settle down in the >> third-floor kitchen and do the problem sets. She had, and knew >> how to use, a slide rule. I didn't. >> >> So we would both read the problem, and I would set up the >> equation, and she would solve it with her slide rule. We would >> thus have exactly the same answers on our problem sets, and get >> the same grades on them. We got some credit toward our final >> grade from the problem sets, more from the midterm, and a lot >> more from the final. >> >> Came the final, and we were put into a much larger room than we'd >> taken the class in, so we could be separated from one another by >> several seats; standard procedure. Memory tells me now that >> there were several hundred problems to solve; it was probably >> more like 100. And there I sat, with no slide rule, just basic >> arithmetic, at which I have always stunk. (And there were no >> electronic calculators, back in the early 1950s.) >> >> After a moment of despair, I reasoned, "Well, this is a physics >> class, not a math class, so if I set up all the equations and >> then solve as many as there's time for by brute force and scratch >> paper, I'll get at least partial credit." So I did that. > >That's how engineers do it :-). Crunching numbers is left >as an exercise for computers. I always thought that computers >were invented so engineers didn't have to do arithmetic. ;-) Well, the *original* intention was so that US Army artillery personnel didn't have to use arithmetic. > >> I got >> maybe halfway through the arithmetic by time's end. Meanwhile, >> my housemate was doing whatever she did, armed with her slide >> rule. >> >> Came the final, I got an A, she got a C. > >It's interesting how diffeent approaches to the same problems >produce different results. I can only assume that because I did the setting-up, she didn't get enough practice in that. A lesson to all of us, I guess. -- Dorothy J. Heydt Vallejo, California djheydt at gmail dot com Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress. Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked. >/BAH