Introductory physics: The new scholasticism

@misc{citeulike:673957, abstract = {Most introductory physics textbooks neglect air resistance in situations where an astute student can observe that it dominates the dynamics. We give examples from many books. Using dimensional analysis we discuss how to estimate the relative importance of air resistance and gravity. The discussion can be used to mitigate the baleful influence of these textbooks. Incorrectly neglecting air resistance is one of their many unphysical teachings. Shouldn't a physics textbook teach correct physics?}, author = {Mahajan, Sanjoy and Hogg, David W. }, citeulike-article-id = {673957}, eprint = {physics/0412107}, keywords = {education, physics}, month = {Mar}, posted-at = {2006-05-30 09:18:38}, priority = {0}, title = {Introductory physics: The new scholasticism}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0412107}, year = {2006} }

TY - ELEC ID - citeulike:673957 L3 - citeulike-article-id:673957 TI - Introductory physics: The new scholasticism N2 - Most introductory physics textbooks neglect air resistance in situations where an astute student can observe that it dominates the dynamics. We give examples from many books. Using dimensional analysis we discuss how to estimate the relative importance of air resistance and gravity. The discussion can be used to mitigate the baleful influence of these textbooks. Incorrectly neglecting air resistance is one of their many unphysical teachings. Shouldn't a physics textbook teach correct physics? KW - education KW - physics AU - Mahajan, Sanjoy AU - Hogg, David PY - 2006/Mar/30/ UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0412107 ER -