A thought problem Physics 4810 7810 Week 11 zoinks Car 1 Leaves New York for Philadelphia 90 miles away traveling at 40 mph 15 min later Car 2 leaves Philadelphia traveling to NYC at 55mph When they meet which car is closer to Philadelphia Day 19 Fa2008 Politics Society and Physics Mahajan Fish Bartlett Rosenberg Weisz If you haven t voted yet and this 1 5 hr block will make the difference you re excused from class I encourage you to vote Gender Gap in 1110 Pre and Post Scores 7 semesters 2100 students Our Class Norms Again potentially charged topics Please focus on ideas not people CONSTRUCTIVE critiques are the best It is okay encouraged for you to differ with Authors Professor And maybe each other Debate Dissent and Discussion are patriotic Pretest 16 Posttest 14 S M S F 18 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 IE 1 IE 2 All Pollock et al Phys Rev ST PER 3 010107 2007 Gender Gap On TEST performance This is an indicator of TEST performance Not necessarily a measure of understanding And certainly not of ability except on the test Course Grades Participation Homework Exams Course GPA S M S F 5 6 0 9 4 5 0 8 4 5 0 6 0 11 0 04 Range 8 1 3 7 6 2 3 3 6 3 0 04 0 17 7 semesters N 3600 Average differences in points except GPA Differences offset one another 1 Politics Political and Partisan 1 A treatise on the science or theory of politics spec the treatise written by Aristotle 2 The theory or practice of government or administration 3 b The assumptions or principles relating to or underlying any activity theory or attitude esp when concerned with questions of power and status in a society 4 a Actions concerned with the acquisition or exercise of power status or authority Your Professor s Bias All classes are political Education is inherently political Education is the key mechanism by which society replicates itself and hence Education relates to assumptions and power of relations in social activities Physics as a tool It is quite possible to acquire a tool but to be unable to use it In my opinion this is far more than quite possible this is inevitable A Meta message How we say things shapes what gets heard I see this paper as a rant I got so mad Do this Don t do that Too easy to dismiss A word about Fish and Mahajan Fish is not being sarcastic from the context of his other work He is arguing about Partisanship rather than Politics I suspect Mahajan sort of sarcastic sort of From Mahajan Nov 2004 The ambiguity reflects my own conflicted views about science Should we stop doing any research I think so Should we stop teaching physics to graduate students Probably Should we stop teaching physics to undergraduates Not sure Should we stop teaching physics as a liberal arts subject Probably not Should we teach it in schools Depends how we teach it as a liberal art maybe yes as an exam filtering subject maybe not At least those are my current thoughts on how to draw some lines but it s a slippery slope and there are so many arguments on every side 2 Who asks the questions 3 In summary the paper Fish argues that science should not enter politics but I believe that it is at least equally as important that politics not enter science Who asks the questions In classes Bad News Inclusion Stereotype threat Self selection In science Good News Who asks the questions In classes Students may believe they need to appease the instructor in order to receive their desired grades From this perspective many people may conclude that political discussions are ultimately unproductive Professors encouraging political discourse is not only fine but great in my opinion but if they take a side one way or the other I think it would discourage students with dissenting opinions from speaking up Is it possible not to have a reigning paradigm see comment about making little Noah s which I found amusing and disturbing Do Away with grades Value PARTICIPATION Students dictate what happens 3 Bartlett Approach What about innovation Can t we find a new energy source What do the Dismal Theorems say the first law of sustainability Population growth or growth in the rate of consumption of resources cannot be indefinitely sustained What is a silent lie Silent Lie What is the silent lie for Mediation Tools mediate allow for thought thought Fish Mahajan Bartlett Physics PER What are their stated goals Students How would BARTLETT MAHAJAN FISH change physics WHAT GOES HERE Students Goal Action Context Context is the collection of components and the relations among them the connected whole which includes constituent elements and the relations among them Birdwhistell uses the analogy of a rope to develop such a notion of context WHAT GOAL DOES IT SUPPORT 4 Context as Rope The fibers that make up the rope are discontinuous when you twist them together you don t make them continuous you make the thread continuous even though it may look in a thread as though each of those particles fibres are going all through it that isn t the case Obviously I am not talking about the environment I am not talking about inside and outside I am talking about the conditions of the system Practice this I leave my house lights on over night how much money did I waste hint you pay approx 10cents kW hr Energy power time 100W 8 hrs 800 W hr 0 8 kW hr Since you pay about 0 10 for each kW hr that s about 8 cents No big deal Does this mean energy is cheap Birdwhistell as quoted in R McDermott 1993 p 274 More Practice What if I have to produce this energy 0 8 kW hrs Assume I am about 1 10th of a horse 0 1 horsepower running on a treadmill 1 hp 750 Watts So I produce about 75 Watts For how long to get 800 Watt hrs more than the amount of time I left the bulb on Is energy still cheap I m willing to pay you 8 cents to do this Estimation Orders of Magnitude Useful if you don t have exact data Too complex a calculation simplify formula Gives trends Orders of Magnitude Exponential Growth Exponential growth Al Bartlett contends The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function How much will a hamburger cost in 2052 When will we run out of fossil fuels How long does it take to charge a flash How close do circuit components have to be to take advantage of avoid quantum tunneling 5