In the Dark on Youtube
Once again I find myself too busy to do a substantial post this lunchtime. However, I’ve been rescued by Prof. Philip Moriarty who tipped me off about the following video from the series “Sixty Symbols” which features this blog in a supporting a role as a source of old examination papers. The theme is the dire state of mathematics education in British schools, something I’ve moaned about on many occasions myself, so I thought I’d post it here. You’ll get a flash of my organ about 6 minutes and 15 seconds into the clip, so if you don’t want to see it please watch with your eyes closed.
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In the Dark 
November 12, 2012 at 8:27 pm
I sort of felt that Ed and Phil (i hope i’ve got that right ) were contradicting each other. One saying he wished that relativity and quantum theory would be taught and the other saying that because the syllabus is now so diverse and covers big bang theory and the like, that it’s not done is sufficient detail.
November 12, 2012 at 9:13 pm
I think it’s Ed and Tony you mean. Ed and myself were in broad agreement that the syllabus is sufficiently broad but lacks depth. We academics at Nottingham do not generally discuss the Sixty Symbols videos with each other before we do them nor do we have any input at all into the editing process – the first time we see the videos is when they’re uploaded to YouTube.
There’s no checking to make sure that we’re all signing from the same hymn sheet!
November 12, 2012 at 10:04 pm
*singing.
Ahem.
November 12, 2012 at 10:08 pm
The standard of spelling also leaves something to be desired.
November 13, 2012 at 10:30 am
I think the problem I have with the syllabus is that relativity is optional, and, chatting to my physics teacher friend, I discovered that most schools steer clear of that option. So while the syllabus is broad (but lacking depth), most pupils aren’t exposed to that breadth, as I understand it. Thats why I took a slightly more militant stance compared to Ed and Phil.
November 13, 2012 at 10:39 am
Difficult decisions have to be made about what the balance should be in the A-level syllabus. I don’t object to having some cosmology and/or particle physics in there, but those are necessary done quite qualitatively and the price that’s being paid seems to be less rigorous physics involving calculations in, e.g., basic mechanics and electromagnetism.
On the maths side we have the same debate at University level. We’ve just had a course review here in Cardiff during which some of us insisted that we should teach elements of group theory and lagrangian dynamics in Year 3.
One Solid State physicist in the department described these subjects as “exotic” and pointed out that they don’t appear at all in Morse and Feshbach. That’s a classical work, of course, but the edition I have was published in 1953….
November 13, 2012 at 10:57 am
Capital “L” for Lagrangian, surely, Peter?
On a more serious note, it’s indeed a great shame that group theory isn’t taught as standard in undergraduate physics courses. The chemists are way ahead of us on this.
November 13, 2012 at 3:07 pm
One thing I think should be taught more in an A level syllabus is nuclear weapons.
You don’t really need any maths. Once you understand about chain reaction, critical mass, enrichment, moderator etc. You have everything you need (to understand one, not to build one).
The reason I think it’s a shame it isn’t is that compared to economics and politics, A level physics doesn’t show up in the newspapers all that much, but A level physics is really all you need to have an understanding of what is going on in Iran and North Korea in terms of possible or actual weapons programmes. It’s always useful to be able to relate what you learn to current affairs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog
It still amazes me that a discovery 74 years ago and 15 orders of magnitude removed from everyday life plays such an important role in who runs the world and, even now, the ramifications of it are still a long way from having fully worked themselves out.
Surely that’s an easier task than getting them excited about the ideal gas equation, stationary waves, Young’s modulus and the like.
November 21, 2012 at 4:49 pm
Really glad I saw this on your blog. I’m doing a feature piece for my journalism project about Welsh teenagers and if their education is preparing them for science degrees. Going to put it on my blog geeksincardiff.wordpress.com