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A few days ago, someone expressed interest in finding content teaching what I think of as the "physics mindset". So not preparing for physics exams, or future c
by mncharity 5y ago
A few days ago, someone expressed interest in finding content teaching what I think of as the "physics mindset". So not preparing for physics exams, or future classes. Nor building math skills, except incidentally. Nor of course learning about the physical world in its richness. But more, the art of... maybe call it system decomposition and approximation into, and playing with, simple models? They asked, and I didn't know of anything to suggest which has that as its focus. Any thoughts?
- quanto 5y agoPerhaps you could start from here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/street-fighting-mathematics https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/street-fighting-mathematics The book attempts to combine approximations with first principles to get at a desired conclusion. These resulting approximations are surprisingly accurate. This kind of work (a more difficult variant of) is usually taught in the first year of graduate school.
- patrick451 5y agoWhat might such a gradschool course be called? This seems like a useful thing to audit at the local university.
- quanto 5y agoIn my case, it was called "Physical Mathematics." An advanced undergraduate course in mathematical modeling could cover some material mentioned here.
- AQuantized 5y agoI can't think of a better way than just learning physics. It's probably impossible to decouple learning something effectively from actively performing related activities, and the systems of the natural world are pretty good practice.
- coyotespike 5y agoYou could try "Thinking Physics," available from Amazon (or LibGen) https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Physics-Understandable-Practical-Reality/dp/0935218084 https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Physics-Understandable-Pract...
- jostylr 5y agoThe book Guesstimation leads to a good very rough approximation mindset, both in terms of how one computes as well as understanding the innate roughness of an answer to a question. They may already be comfortable with that approach, but if, not, it is a very useful place to begin though it is more of a preparation for those ideas. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691129495/guesstimation https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691129495/gu...