01-27-2008, 03:28 PM
[quote Ted King]The only reason I mentioned de Broglie's hypothesis was to inform the students that there is a generally accepted underlying reason for the energy levels that Bohr did not originally envision. I will admit I was hand waving because I don't understand it beyond a superficial level ...
You are to be applauded for making the effort.
When I teach Astronomy, I have to try to explain a little bit of quantum theory to students who have gone through their entire academic careers without algebra (or even very much arithmetic).
The get it first when I talk about stellar spectroscopy. Then they get it again when we talk about cosmology,
What is most frustrating to me is that this latter discussion is frequently the thing that most fires the imagination of my students, and stimulates to most (and most enthusiastic) questions. However, without the math and a firm grounding in classical mechanics, there is simply no way for them to learn anything about QM.
And I don't mean that they need to know how to solve partial differential equations, they just have to be able to follow the algebra when I derive and simplify.
Teaching QM to physics students presents different challenges. Most QM classes are arranged chronologically -- outlining the historical development of the theory as a way to introduce concepts. The problem with this approach is that much of the early work in QM was done by folks like Born and Dirac, who made some astonishing leaps in developing the formalism of QM -- so it is very hard to build concept upon concept, the way that you do when teaching classical physics.
I am curious now, what is the core curriculum for this class? What topics in biology do you cover with gifted middle school students?
You are to be applauded for making the effort.
When I teach Astronomy, I have to try to explain a little bit of quantum theory to students who have gone through their entire academic careers without algebra (or even very much arithmetic).
The get it first when I talk about stellar spectroscopy. Then they get it again when we talk about cosmology,
What is most frustrating to me is that this latter discussion is frequently the thing that most fires the imagination of my students, and stimulates to most (and most enthusiastic) questions. However, without the math and a firm grounding in classical mechanics, there is simply no way for them to learn anything about QM.
And I don't mean that they need to know how to solve partial differential equations, they just have to be able to follow the algebra when I derive and simplify.
Teaching QM to physics students presents different challenges. Most QM classes are arranged chronologically -- outlining the historical development of the theory as a way to introduce concepts. The problem with this approach is that much of the early work in QM was done by folks like Born and Dirac, who made some astonishing leaps in developing the formalism of QM -- so it is very hard to build concept upon concept, the way that you do when teaching classical physics.
I am curious now, what is the core curriculum for this class? What topics in biology do you cover with gifted middle school students?