Sept 12th Exit Slip: Drawing in the Orchard Garden

 

This program started two weeks ago, and since then I have been asked the following question several times, "what did you study before this program?". Every time I give the answer (physics and astronomy), the response I hear is consistently about how much the person I am speaking to hates physics but loves astronomy. I always find this fascinating because these two subjects are intimately connected. Most of my astronomy courses just involved putting physics concepts into practice. How is it that so many students hold a disdain for physics, but an intense interest in astronomy? In my personal view, my drawings here may be useful as an analogy for how I view this phenomenon. 

To me, the way many students view physics is like my drawing of the wheelbarrow. I found it very difficult to draw the wheelbarrow (a human made object) because many of the lines and angles demanded perfection. Even before I started my sketch, I felt like I did not have the intuition required to get it right. For many students, physics may be exactly the same. It may seem like there is only one way to arrive at a correct answer, and if you do not understand right away, there is no hope for you. This view of physics makes it seem like everything must be perfectly taken into account to correctly answer a question. In my experience, this is the way that many early physics courses are taught, and it may be a big part of what pushes so many people away from the subject.

Contrasting this is my drawing of a squirrel behind a tree trunk, which represents astronomy. The drawing is not perfect, but it was very fun to create and at the end I felt somewhat accomplished with it. This is because things in nature are generally not perfect (no straight lines or 90 degree angles), so drawing them is far more forgiving. This reminds me of how we apply physics concepts in astronomy. For those who may not be aware, astronomy is very far from an ultra precise science, often involving numbers so incomprehensibly large that approximations are not just acceptable, they are encouraged. The way astronomy is taught reflects this, and students see that they do not need to be perfect to achieve an answer that a teacher will deem correct. During my previous degree this resulted in the astronomy students taking more risks and creative approaches to solving problems, as they often knew all that was required for a correct mark was to be in the correct order of magnitude.

Although many aspects of physics are incredibly precise, and to some extent astronomy is an exception, I would like to use these ideas in the problems I give to students. Perhaps it is possible to build the confidence of students with astronomy-like problems that are more forgiving and less strict. This is mostly just a thought for now, but it could be worth trying someday.