I fell behind on course reports from my modern physics class a few weeks back, but I do mean to get back to them, when I have more time. The material remaining is the end-of-term sprint through a bunch of topics in modern physics-- three classes on atoms and molecules, three classes on solid state physics, three classes on nuclear and particle physics.
It's a mad dash through a lot of material (as the eventual course-wrap-up post will make clear), which raises one of the eternal questions of academia:
When teaching undergraduate students about a discipline, which is more important, breadth or depth?
That is, is it better for students to know a lot about a couple of fields, or a little about everything?
You can find both approaches in different parts of academia. My own undergraduate education went for depth-- there were multiple faculty members who did research in AMO physics, so the curriculum had a strong focus on optics and atoms, but I never had any classes on nuclear or particle physics. Union's curriculum goes the other way, with a "modern physics" class that attempts to cover as many fields as possible, at the cost of not going into much depth about any of them.
Each approach has its pros and cons, and it's not clear to me that one is strongly preferable to the other. I'm curious about what other people think, though. So if you were designing your ideal science curriculum, which would you go for?
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I believe it was Buckminster Fuller who said, "An educated person knows something about everything and everything about something" (paraphrased from memory).
There is a minimum depth for which it makes sense to try to cover a subject. But as this is an undergraduate core course, you should cover as many subjects as you can cover at that minimum depth. In particular, it would be a mistake to go too deep in areas where you offer upper level electives while leaving uncovered areas in which you do not offer such electives; e.g., if your department does not offer a nuclear physics elective this may be the only chance your students have to learn anything about nuclear physics.
Interesting question.
It may be a philosophical question? A survey course teaching a little bit about a lot of areas is useful for knowing about physics in general. An intro course that goes into great depth about a specific area could be useful for learning about how science actually works.
In an ideal world? I'd require a group of general survey courses, and one in-depth course.
I tend to see undergrad education as teaching the tool of how to think and solve problems. For that use, I think it's best to ensure that all students have a basic understanding of as large a collection of disciplines as possible, and then allowing them to delve deeper into the areas that interest them most.
Survey teaching allows them to see how physicists and mathematicians and social scientists approach a problem differently, and (in my mind) how a combination of those ideas can lead to a truly novel solution.
Yes.
I have been assigned to cover AP Physics in approximately 150 class hours. Earlier in my career I was assigned to teach physics to advanced high-school seniors. When I did not have to rush through AP we covered a few subjects in depth, but I also wanted my students to know what interesting things would be found under the heading "physics".
As they learned their calculus we would sneak it in. Once they learned integration, work problems could have variable forces!
Why do people consistently phrase this question-- this sort of question, even-- in a form that implies that it has a definitive, universal answer?
What sort of mindset do you have to have in order to answer this question any other way than, "It depends on what the students are planning to do with their education"?
I figure that the teacher is trying to maximize the product of depth and breadth among the students. Dimensions of L^2.
I also recall in "The Colour of Magic" how the observers about to be thrown over the edge of the world to determine the sex of the great turtle on whose back stand the elephants on whose backs the Diskworld rests, are announced as being sent to their "Certain deaths. Uhh, depths."
Why do people consistently phrase this question-- this sort of question, even-- in a form that implies that it has a definitive, universal answer?
If you prefer, the question is one of priorities. Given limited time and resources, do you think it's more important to get breadth at the expense of depth, or vice versa?
The answer will likely be different for different student populations, and probably also different for different faculty teaching the same population of students. But that's why it's a question worth asking-- to see how other people think about the trade-off.
Personally, I'm not entirely sure it is either. I am of the belief that there are certain skill sets associated with each individual course that end up being more important that the knowledge itself since a student with a good grounding in the skill set can set off on their own in a given direction.
The fact is that the amount of knowledge out there is constantly increasing. But what doesn't change are some basic underlying principles. The problem with breadth is that there may not be enough time for students to truly gain an understanding of the fundamentals of a subject. Oddly, this is the same problem with depth though not for the same reason. Depth runs the risk of ignoring the "big picture" and how things are connected by getting so far into the nuances of a particular topic that it's broader implications are lost.
But, with the exception of some basic facts that are needed, there are common methods of analysis - skill sets - unique to each particular course. Students with a true grasp of these can tackle anything more advanced in a particular subject with ease.
I'd lean toward breadth. They will probably end up specializing later anyway and the breadth approach will expose them to more fields so they can make a more informed choice.
The choice is between a shallow coverage of many topics or a deep coverage of a few topics, and it parallels another dichotomy that comes up here occasionally: whether science is a collection-of-facts or a way-of-thinking. The broad-shallow approach is akin to science-as-a-collection-of-facts, as bare facts are perhaps the most shallow level on the educational depth scale. The deeper levels of the educational depth scale are not of the same character as the shallower levels. Facts, and other bits of the broad-shallow approach, are comparatively easy for a student to pick up on his/her own, later on, should s/he need them. The ability to go deep into a subject, however, is not easy. It is a specific skill that needs to be practiced, but having done it once under supervision a student is better prepared to do it again, on his/her own, when needed.
I definitely would shoot for breadth first, depth second. At least for chemistry. I vote this for both specialists and general audiences.
In chemistry many of the most exciting advances are described by those bridging fields, by bringing to bear a different perspective and skill set. From what little I understand about physics it often seems that the opposite is true. Still, truly "transformative" science will, more often than not, span seemingly unrelated fields to unlock new secrets of nature.
In a general education I think it's almost more important to have a wide breadth of knowledge. I am proud to be able to understand the rudimentary basics of, say, the internal workings of a cell so I can understand, say, what's REALLY up with stem cells. I know "enough" about cosmology and stuff to see what's kinda funny about the inflation model (and a lot else). The same applies when some friend of mine recommends a poet as "kind of like Shelly" or whatever. It certainly won't make me enjoy a movie more (probably) but I can see archetypes at work etc. I guess my education loans really DID buy something. . .and I consider all of this a critical part of being an active participant in today's world. Others may disagree or simply not care about such things.
Getting back to the example in the OP of intro physics I would say that it is VITAL for students to have an understanding of both classical and quantum views of the world. Especially since most of modern technology relies on/utilizes/feels quantum effects and the stark strangeness of QM is a good thing to impart to students. Furthermore, I am VERY against the trap of sometimes portraying the important stuff in science as all discovered and understood. We should keep students interested in continuing to fund scientific research once they are taxpayers, if nothing else!
It's not an either-or. But in later years I often said I taught less and less about less and less. I think some areas should be covered to the depth that the student understands the area. If students have good understanding of an area, they can use this as a comparison to realize how little or much they understand of other areas. On the other hand, they need some insight into the breadth of the discipline.
Addressing the modern physics course in particular, I vote for breadth.
In my view, as a sophomore physics major, it was a chance to learn "for real" the subjects that had first gotten me interested in physics. I see it as a way to keep students interested while they go through some of the lower-level required courses that are more of a grind, and perhaps not as interesting.
No matter how in-depth you go into any of the modern physics subjects, sophomores are going to have to learn it more rigorously later, so increasing depth doesn't necessarily gain you much in the big picture.
"When teaching undergraduate students about a discipline, which is more important, breadth or depth?"
Whichever is best at helping the students to guess whether they will enjoy continuing in the field.
But that's why it's a question worth asking-- to see how other people think about the trade-off.
While my initial response may have been more testy than I intended, I still think I'm right: If you want to ask about the trade-off, ask about the trade-off, don't ask about a false dichotomy.
If this is a "standard" modern physics course, depth. Focused on quantum specifically. Relativity, the way it is in, say Beiser, isn't worth the time. Now, if you've got a much better approach at hand, that might argue for some breadth. But depth is much better. Sort of the inverse of the delta function as limit of a Guassian, in terms of knowledge -- develop the ability to learn and absorb challenging ideas (well, a little bit of it), and use that skill to get more later/elsewhere.
As a student of said Modern Physics class, I had no issues with the way the course was organized (my grade on the other hand seemed odd). It was meant to provide a broad overview of physics as it is today, and how it got to that point. In this, the course succeeded.
To properly answer the question though, I think that for more introductory level classes, the focus should be on the breadth of the subject to introduce the students in the course to a lot of different topics. Then, as they find that they are particularly interested in a certain area, they can move on to a more in-depth look at said student's area of interest.
Look, if you've already decided to call it "Modern Physics", you have decided in favor of breadth. The goal of that sort of course is defined by learning objectives and assessments targeted at a broad sort of literacy across the entire subject area of physics from soup to nuts.
One alternative is a curriculum build around the 5-quarter series defined by the five Berkeley Physics books, where book 4 is quantum mechanics and builds on a lot of tools developed in book 3, on waves. (Book 5 is stat mech, while relativity is in the mechanics book and heavily used in the Jackson-like treatment of E+M in volume 2.) All that needs is a book 6 about "modern physics" (meaning quarks, nuclei, AMO and lasers, and semiconductors), but two years is a bit long for an intro course even with that amount of depth. However, many departments put a class like #5 or #6 in the upper division curriculum to provide some slack while doing E+M and QM at the senior level.
So, define your objectives. Is your objective, as a department, to graduate students who are ignorant of nuclear and particle physics? That might be OK if you ensured they really knew quantum mechanics, since that is the essential tool for all of modern physics at the next level, but I'd be a lot happier if they knew something about the difference between nuclear reactors and bombs before they entered a world where those show up in public policy debates.