I'm giving the last lecture of new material in my intro E&M class today, on Maxwell's equations and electromagnetic waves. In the last couple of weeks, I've been struck again by the way our trimester system (three ten-week terms, instead of two 15-week semesters) is a lousy match for the standard curricula. Or even new curricula, like the Matter and Interactions course we've started using this year.
In this case, it's not a matter of needing to rush to fit things in, though. It's a matter of peaking at the wrong time
M&I is different than the standard textbooks in a lot of respects, but like most books, it's organized in such a way that people at a semester school can cover about one chapter per week. It's also arranged so that the hardest material is not at the very end, but rather about three-quarters of the way through. Gauss's Law, Ampere's Law, and Faraday's Law, the three parts of the intro E&M class that are most confusing for new students, fall in the ninth and tenth chapters (out of 13). The last few chapters cover basic wave phenomena, and a really quick intro to the photon concept, material that isn't nearly as intimidating. The class sort of tapers off, in a way that works to preserve everybody's sanity.
The problem is, we've only got ten weeks to work with. which means we're hitting the students with the very hardest material in the ninth and tenth week of classes. This is right when everybody's nerves are most frayed, and students are scrambling to complete final projects and papers for other classes. And, on top of everything else, the weather has gotten nice (well, not today, but in general).
Getting the class to focus is really difficult right at the moment. Hell, getting the faculty to focus is pretty tough right now. And this is when we're doing the hardest material in the entire course... The results aren't pretty.
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Education is like traffic control - how do you know it is working unless it works badly? Money and materiel flow are specifically asynchronous to goal to extract maximum value from those that would be, in theory, aided.
Southern California innovated traffic lights. A four lane intersection now has each through lane and each turn lane proceed separately. This minimizes mileage, maximizes pollution, and degrades cars' internals to justify ever more heinous government regulation, plus sales tax revenues. Folks turn off their motors during the interminable wait. Nobody makes two lights in a row.
If a child receives any education, learn that a productive individual is a commodity to be exploited and consumed to aid administrators and the deserving. Look at your phone or electric bill. How much of it is devoted to "helping" people rather than paying for purchase? Our electric bill is bloated with compassion - reactor decomissioning, utility access, mandated "public service" charges, renting the meter... It goes on for two inches of text. Education was slow to see the darkness, but now it lights the candle at both ends. Can it ignite the middle, too?
Peaking at the end of term seems bad for learning in general. I think students need some time to process and integrate what they have learned, and having the hard stuff right before exams makes that difficult - or impossible. But then maybe I see it that way because I'm a slow learner.
This might be too late, but "The First Unified Field Theory" would make a good theme to get enthusiasm for the last class of the year, and to increase the chance they will realize it is important enough to still remember it a few months from now!
Yes to comment #2. It's always the case that the last topic covered is the first forgotten. It often only shows up on the final exam, for starters, so students never review it. Some of our math faculty move topics around so they don't put anything really crucial in the last week if they can avoid it.
I took undergrad physics in a 10-week quarter system. We used the "berkeley 2" book by Purcell, and it wrapped up with AC circuits. [At least I don't see any indication in the textbook that we got to fields in matter.] That means we did induction and Maxwell's waves with about a week and a half or so to go in the quarter, but it was pretty natural at that point because of the way that text is put together. Of course, that means the first thing we forgot was AC circuit theory!
BTW, anyone doing grad work out of Jackson could really get a lot out of the last 2 chapters of this book. It is basically Jackson for smart freshmen.
Re: #3
After the unsuccessful unified Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Quintesence model, the first Unified Field Theory of importance in Western thought would be that of Sir Isaac Newton. And the giants on whose shoulders he stood (Galileo, Kepler, et al.). It was a major breakthrough to understand, quantify, and publish that terrestrial matter (i.e. apples, cannonballs) and heavenly matter (i.e. Earth, Sun, Moon, Planets, Comets) obeyed the same dynamical laws.
Boscovitch carried that further, but I can't read Latin to be sure.
The next such step, by Faraday, et al., would be the "SECOND Unified Field Theory" -- or am I missing something here?