The role physics can play in a multi-disciplinary curriculum for non-physics scientists and engineers

Edward F Redish,Vashti Sawtelle,Chandra Turpen

doi:10.30935/scimath/9621

Edward F Redish, Vashti Sawtelle + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.30935/scimath/9621

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Abstract

At many physics departments a significant fraction of teaching is in support of engineers and scientists in other majors. These service courses are thus an automatic crucible of interdisciplinary interaction, and at times, strife. For example, the traditional algebra-based physics course is often considered by both biology faculty and students as having little relevance to their discipline. To address this issue, our multi-disciplinary multi-university team has been negotiating the role of a physics in the curriculum of life-science students; In NEXUS/Physics we have designed a class that stresses traditional physics skills but in contexts chosen to better meet the needs of life science students. Non-standard topics include chemical energy, diffusion and random motion, and thermodynamics with careful discussions of entropy, enthalpy, and Gibbs free energy. Explorations into how physics intertwines with an engineer's curriculum suggests places where analogous negotiations could lead to substantial modifications of physics courses for engineers that substantially enhance their value for engineering students.

Highlights

Reforming a curriculum can be quite a challenge
Instructors know what to do, students know how to respond, grades are consistent with student expectations, and everything seems fine -- until some researcher starts asking new questions and we all learn that we have been fooling ourselves about the level of learning achieved
2 Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Grant: National Experiment in Undergraduate Science Education (NEXUS) 3 National Science Foundation (NSF) TUES Grant: Creating a Common Thermodynamics 4 It is common in US colleges and universities that scientists are required to take courses in literature and the arts, and humanists are required to take laboratory science courses

Summary

Introduction

Reforming a curriculum can be quite a challenge. Instructional environments often evolve into stable patterns. When novice students do not possess these associations, what they mean by a response can be something quite different from what an expert instructor hears This is why educational research teaches us that instructors need to have a good understanding their subject, but of their students -- what their students are bringing into the classroom and how they are thinking and learning. Over the past four years, a group of scientists, curriculum developers, and educational researchers have been creating a new introductory physics course for life science majors as part of a project. While we have traditionally taught our large number of engineers in a separate (calculus-based) physics course, life-science students have typically taken a catch-all (algebra-based) physics course that served architects, computer science students, and any other student who needed a laboratory-based science class to satisfy a university requirement.. ● Physics at the atomic and molecular scale should be saved for later courses. ● Much of the content of the class should be learning to reason mathematically with a focus on solving problems that are largely mathematical manipulation. ● The critical elements that must be preserved are those that are appropriate for a beginning mechanical, civil, or electrical engineer. (This controls the approach to mechanics, thermodynamics, electric currents, ....)

HHMI Grant

Conclusion