Thinking in Physics The pleasure of reasoning and understanding [Paperback]

Read this book if you care about students really understanding physics and getting genuine intellectual satisfaction from doing so. Read it too if you fear that this goal is out of reach  you may be surprised! Laurence Viennot here shows ways to deal with the awkward fact that common sense thinking is often not the same as scientific thinking. She analyses examples of frequent and widespread errors and confusions, which provide a real eye-opener for the teacher. More than that, she shows ways to avoid and overcome them. The book argues against over-emphasis on fun applications, demonstrating that students also enjoy and value clear thinking.
The book has three parts:
making sense of special scientific ways of reasoning (words, images, functions)
making connections between very different topics, each illuminating the other
simplifying, looking for consistency and avoiding incoherent over-simplification
The book is enhanced with supplementary online materials that will allow readers to further expand their teaching or research interests and think about them more deeply.The examples provided in this book shed light on the processes of teaching and popularization of physics, from the high school to the early undergraduate level. It emphasizes teaching students the value of clear thinking and reasoning.Part I?Acquiring reasoning skills: words, images and functions.- Some tools essential for comprehension.- Words we have to understand.- The image: is it really doing its job?.- Graphs and functions.- Some surprising invariances.- Introduction.- The speed of light in vacuo.- Propagation of mechanical signals.- Coefficients of friction.- When mass doesn't count.- The mirror.- The power and non-obviousness of invariance.- Analysis of functional dependence: a powerful tool.- Numerical or functional?.- Even before values: the form of the relationship.- Keeping an eye on a causal reading of relations.- Some factors not apparl£‡