2 ms·
A feel for reasonable values is rarely an explicit curriculum objective. Perhaps in quantitative introductory biology. When a popular physics text had an idea
by mncharity 7y ago
A feel for reasonable values is rarely an explicit curriculum objective. Perhaps in quantitative introductory biology.
When a popular physics text had an ideal-gas-law chapter problem, with numbers describing solid argon, for multiple editions and many years, it was because everyone, checkers, instructors, assistants, and students, was mindlessly plug-and-chugging, not because there was a desire for students to validate simplifications or reflect on the reasonableness of results. There's like more than half a century of professorial letters to the editor, across multiple sciences, complaining of their graduate students lacking a rough-quantitative feel for the field.
Maybe physics or engineering could use an effort like https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/ https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/ .