Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2014
Volume 59, Number 5
Saturday–Tuesday, April 5–8, 2014; Savannah, Georgia
Session K17: Invited Session: Gaining Inspiration from Galileo, Einstein and Oppenheimer |
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Sponsoring Units: FHP Chair: Catherine Westfall, Michigan State University Room: 105-106 |
Sunday, April 6, 2014 1:30PM - 2:06PM |
K17.00001: Galileo as an intellectual heretic and why that matters Invited Speaker: Paolo Palmieri What was physics like before Galileo? Five centuries ago physics was taught in universities all over Europe as part of a broader field of knowledge known as natural philosophy. It was neither quantitative, nor experimental, but mostly an a-priori, logical type of inquiry about principles concerning notions such as space, time, and motion, from which deductions could be made about the natural world. Galileo changed all that. He claimed that inquiry about nature should be experimental, and that reasoning in natural philosophy should be mathematical. It was a bold enough move. But Galileo's intellectual heresy was the discovery that knowledge of the natural world could only be achieved by relaxing the requirement that principles be known with absolute certainty. He demonstrated that a new mathematical physics could be built upon principles based on experiment. Thus the new physics could be extended recklessly by starting from less than certain foundations. Galileo's startling insight was that scientific truth need not be localized but can be diffused throughout the structure of science. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 6, 2014 2:06PM - 2:42PM |
K17.00002: Walking In The Footsteps of Einstein: Why History of Physics Aids Physics Education Invited Speaker: Gerd Kortemeyer We twice organized and led a European Study Abroad course to explore the early history of relativity and quantum theory. The course led us to Munich, Bern, Berlin, Zurich, Copenhagen, and G\"ottingen. The talk describes the sites, impressions, experiences, academics, logistics, and learning outcomes of our courses. It also addresses how some of the aspects of the history of physics can and should be used in teaching regular physics courses. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 6, 2014 2:42PM - 3:18PM |
K17.00003: Using the History of Physics to Enrich Your Teaching. Invited Speaker: Cameron Reed As students most of us probably acquired the impression that the brilliant theories and experiments described in our texts sprang essentially fully-formed from the minds of their developers. As my own teaching career progressed, I began to explore the details of how what I was teaching - particularly in the area of modern physics - had come about. I learned that the real history was often a much more muddled and uncertain business than the polished narratives presented in texts; indeed, leading physicists themselves were often in a state of confusion not unlike that of a student encountering complex ideas for the first time. Exploring the history of our science also naturally leads to learning about the personalities and lives of its developers. In this talk, which is intended for a non-specialist audience, I will relate a few examples of how my own appreciation and teaching of physics has been enriched by exploring its roots. I will also relate some human-interest episodes from of the lives of famous physicists from the time of Kepler through the twentieth century. Some of these vignettes are tragic, some are funny, and some are inspiring, but all serve as reminders that even great physicists are subject to the usual whims of human nature and the sometimes cruel circumstances of their times. [Preview Abstract] |
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