Review of Foundations of Physics by Thomas Hsu Philip Coburn Department of Physics SUNY Buffalo State College 1300 Elmwood Ave Buffalo NY 14222 pcoburn nicholsschool org Acknowledgement This review was written in partial completion of PHY 690 Masters Project in Physics Education supervised by Dr Dan MacIsaac with guidance from Dr David Abbott Foundations of Physics 2004 by Thomas Hsu is an introductory physics textbook aimed at a high school audience The book is published by Cambridge Physics Outlet CPO best known for their plywood physics instructional equipment I teach physics primarily to 9th graders at the Nichols School a selective private day school in Buffalo NY All ninth graders are required to take physics I evaluated this textbook as a possible replacement for Conceptual Physics by Paul Hewitt 2002 the textbook we had used for six years in the freshman course Foundations of Physics is sold by CPO either separately or as part of a bundle that includes 25 textbooks and lab manuals a teacher s toolkit and a set of laboratory equipment see table for details and pricing This review focuses mainly on the textbook while also considering its part in the larger Foundations of Physics program In 684 pages Foundations of Physics covers in order motion forces energy momentum waves sound light optics electricity and magnetism thermodynamics states of matter and nuclear physics The math is at the level of elementary algebra and right triangle trigonometry Except for the right hand rule for forces in electromagnetism vectors are limited to one and two dimensions One of the strengths of the book is its layout Pages are laid out in a distinctive landscape format leaving room for a column of figures and graphs on the right and a column of paragraph title phrases on the left to bracket a central column of text Each page is selfcontained text never carries over from one page to the next By breaking up the text into manageable chunks providing related visuals and cuing students with paragraph topic phrases Hsu provides concrete reading aids Unfortunately some pages are topped off with distracting or confusing filler material such as the discussion of g forces on page 98 but in general the format works well While Hsu is not able to achieve the folksy readability of Conceptual Physics the language of the text is adequately clear Another advantage for New York State teachers is that Hsu employs equations and notation that are broadly compatible with those used in New York State s Regents Physics program In addition the CPO website provides a table that shows correlations among the textbook lab manual and New York state standards CPO 2010 showing how the textbook and lab program could be used to meet Regents requirements Foundations of Physics is not however a perfect textbook One critical weakness is that it includes misleading or confusing presentations of conceptually difficult material also noted by Hubisz n d Hsu does not make good use of the accumulated wealth of knowledge about student misconceptions and learning difficulties Arons 1990 McDermott Redish 1999 For instance the concepts of mass weight and inertia are known to be a source of confusion for students Arons 1990 pp 57 64 While introducing the concept of mass 2004 p 26 Hsu sets up novice students to conflate weight and mass The more mass an object has the more weight it has In the discussion of mass weight and gravity 2004 p 96 Hsu states that The word weight is used to describe the force of gravity acting on an object Two pages later p 98 he continues An object is weightless when it feels no net force from gravity A way to become weightless is to be in free fall The glossary p 656 defines free fall as movement that is due only to the force of gravity It is not clear how to reconcile feeling no net force from gravity being weightless and moving only due to the force of gravity being in free fall cf Arons 1990 p 72 The difficulties continue in the description of force and inertia An object with a lot of inertia takes a lot of force to start or stop an object with a small amount of inertia requires a small amount of force to start or stop 2004 p 79 Hsu s language here could easily lead students to think that inertia is a threshold to be overcome a common and well documented misconception Halloun Hestenes 1985 p 1057 Hestenes et al 1992 p 144 This difficult set of concepts is only one of many areas where this reviewer had trouble with Hsu s inattention to content subtleties and student learning difficulties including the wave phenomena of reflection and refraction p 270 271 potential energy pp 189 191 and voltage p 383 example on p 400 Given the vast amount of research in the field of physics education this is a fairly major failing As mentioned above another feature of the textbook is that it is part of an integrated potentially affordable larger package including lab manuals a teacher s guide and laboratory equipment details in table This has both strengths and weaknesses The teacher s guide is devoted primarily to providing step by step guidance for each page of the investigations manual an overview a sample teacher student dialog an image of the investigation page and examples data and answers The dialogs in particular are a strength for teachers new to the subject area as the dialogs identify possible student misconceptions and highlight important learning content Hsu 2009 p viii On the other hand they also suggest a weakness although the Foundations of Physics program claims to be inquiry centered Hsu 2004 p i the lab manual investigations are as carefully scripted as the teacher s guide dialogs and contain little in the way of student directed inquiry A strength of the program s electronic data collection technology component is that by only using photogates and timers it limits the problem of students using a black box about which they have no real understanding However this comes with a corresponding loss of capability for real time graphing of motion data which has been shown to benefit student learning Brasell 1987 Sokoloff et al 2007 Finally the per student cost of the program varies widely a strength or weakness that depends on the number of students involved details in table In summary the full program provides a tightly integrated highly prescribed laboratory program that has both assets and weaknesses depending on the goals resources and circumstances surrounding the course being taught Foundations of Physics is an
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