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A point that's rightfully emphasized by the author: > Solving problems is the only way to understand physics. There's no way around it. This generalizes well

• deleted 3y ago
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• belugacat 3y ago
  That’s a POV I’ve grown to adopt as I got older (like many, perhaps). I used to heavily privilege theory, believing that everything could (and maybe should) be derived from first principles. Now I place the concrete over everything else; theory is nice when it can illuminate why the practice works. Otherwise, it’s just words. The most frustrating is when I have friends who have derived their entire understanding of a subject I know as a practitioner (typically something tech/programming related) from watching YouTube videos/listening to podcasts. Because they’ve heard hours and hours from experts, they have a feeling of deep understanding. But talking to them about this topic is extremely frustrating because their knowledge clearly has never had to be applied to the real world, and is grounded in nothingness, so they misunderstand lots, but they feel like they know what they’re talking about as much as you do.
  • civilitty 3y ago
    > That’s a POV I’ve grown to adopt as I got older (like many, perhaps). I used to heavily privilege theory, believing that everything could (and maybe should) be derived from first principles. > Now I place the concrete over everything else; theory is nice when it can illuminate why the practice works. Otherwise, it’s just words. That mirrors the trajectory of all humankind, doesn’t it? From lofty Platonic ideals to nitty gritty empiricism and experimentation.
    • SamBam 3y ago
      An odd hypothesis, I think. I don't think our ancestors were any less practical than us. Probably a great deal more practical, in fact. You reference Plato, but you could easily phrase it in the other direction. "From Roman engineering to Wittgenstein blithering on about meaning."
  • antegamisou 3y ago
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    • ahazred8ta 3y ago
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  • tourgen 3y ago
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• javajosh 3y ago
  Yes, and I'd take it further. What I'd like to see more of in physics texts is presenting a problem before offering the solution. Too often you get what amounts to a laundry list of techniques and ideas, which are the components to the answers to hard problems, but the student isn't motivated to learn them. If you present the hard problem first, the student may flail around and realize: I need something to help with this! Now that they know they need it, and why, you can give them the tool that fits the bill. For example, I think calculus is probably better learned after trying to write down some force laws, and perhaps doing some numerical analysis. Then when you learn them you realize those nice closed-form solutions aren't busywork, they are huge labor saving tools that eliminate ad hoc labor intensive analysis. I would also deemphasize the more mathy parts of calculus - do you really need a deep dive into continuity or the fundamental theorem of calculus? Eventually, yes. But it's just like programming: you're not going to need to understand language theory or ADTs or category theory or lambda calculus to write your first program. Or your second. And, IMHO, you should only reach for this understanding when you realize you need it. Otherwise, it won't integrate well into your toolkit.
  • whartung 3y ago
    > If you present the hard problem first, the student may flail around and realize: I need something to help with this! I suffer from this. Sure, I'd like to learn physics, but what I don't want to do is learn all of it. Right now. Because what I'd rather learn is what I need to solve the problem I have. It's a silly problem, it's not real world, but it's my problem that I'd like solved. As I've grabbed my horse and lance and rushed at this windmill from assorted directions, I quickly run into my limitations that prevent the problem being solved. I run into vocabulary problems with the math, the fact that I simply don't have the math to approach the problem (which appears to be some vector calculus -- I think. "No, you idiot, it's XYZ instead", but I don't know enough to know that it's not vector calculus, if, indeed, it isn't). I try to apply basic kinematics to the problem, but I don't know if that's enough. And, finally, it could be all of those things plus, oh, some optimization issues and, also, would you like to be introduced to the several different techniques for computing numeric integration and the differential equation solvers? "Eeep!" To quote the film "Addams Family Values": Wednesday: Pugsley, the baby weighs 10 pounds, the cannonball weighs 20 pounds. Which will hit the stone walkway first? Pugsley: I'm still on fractions. So, yea, that's me, I'm Pugsley. It seems I need 2+ years of mechanics, calculus, and differential equations, and, probably, some time with computer based simulation all to chart the course for a spaceship to a planet for a 40 year old role playing game. Of course, I don't know what the, perhaps, abbreviated path I could take through those domains to get to be able to answer my question. That might knock a year off the study, but, unlikely. "Better to have all of the foundation" and all that. Which is true, but I'm kind of after the "reward" part here, not so much the "journey".
• BenFranklin100 3y ago
  I only became reasonably proficient in physics when I took the summer off between undergrad and graduate school and spent three months, six days a week, ten hours a day, doing nothing but working through four years of undergraduate physics curriculum by solving problems from my textbooks. There is no substitute for solving problems.
  • ak_111 3y ago
    That is some dedication, well done. Interesting to know more about your career and where this lead to if you continued down the physics path.
    • BenFranklin100 3y ago
      I went on to earn a doctorate in biophysics and then began a career developing instrumentation for biomedical research. While I no longer work directly in the field of physics, the physical intuition and reasoning abilities honed by a physics education has allowed me to successfully lead teams consisting of electrical and mechanical engineers, while serving as the liaison to biologists and doctors. I regard a physics education as a modern-day ‘liberal arts’ technical degree.
      • blueblimp 3y ago
        > I regard a physics education as a modern-day ‘liberal arts’ technical degree. Some anecdotal evidence for this: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/dario-amodei#details https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/dario-amodei#details > Dario Amodei: We have generally found that if we hire someone who is a Physics PhD or something, that they can learn ML and contribute just very quickly in most cases.
      • deleted 3y ago
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  • shanusmagnus 3y ago
    Like another commenter, I'm curious what drove you to this. Seems like clearly A Good Idea I Could Have Benefited From, but my attitude was always: I finished the class, whatever I need to learn through application, life will point me toward. Yet I wish I had done something similar to what you did. What gave you the impetus?
• ChuckMcM 3y ago
  Totally 100% with this. When younger I thought I could read the material and say "Oh, okay that makes sense I understand this." Only to fail miserably when on a test or somewhere I had to apply what I "knew" and realizing I didn't actually know it. I lean strongly toward autodidacticism and learned that if I could solve problems with the technique then I knew it.
  • ecshafer 3y ago
    My calculus 1 professor gave the advice that the best way to study is to do every problem in the book, then go and get another book and do every problem in that book, and keep doing that until you look at a problem and know exactly every step to do immediately.
    • ChuckMcM 3y ago
      Time consuming but I can see this being really really effective.
    • tnecniv 3y ago
      There’s certainly fields of math where I’ve seen a twist on the advice. Differential geometry, for example, is a big field with a lot of notation. Different textbooks end up using very different notations and covering non-overlapping sections of the field. Therefore, the advice I got was to not just do the problems, but translate the definitions and theorems into a unified notation that you feel is natural.
    • coliveira 3y ago
      That's how I learned probability theory. I studied from one book and solved all problems, then moved to the next, until it became second nature. Probability theory is one of the topics that you will never learn by only reading, it is necessary to develop the necessary intuition.
  • phalf 3y ago
    Which exactly describes the problem with today's culture of people watching a 10 minute youtube clip and then thinking they are experts on the subject matter. Be it microservices, coronavirus or taxation.
• remote_phone 3y ago
  In college, I was always the first one out of my friends to “get” a concept, like fast Fourier transforms, anything with signal processing or even coding or any labs we had to do etc so I would spend time teaching them in the library. However I never did any of the exercises, mostly due to laziness and not arrogance. They would get A’s and I would get C’s and D’s. I emphasize this story to my kids because knowing isn’t important because everyone eventually figure it out. It’s the ones who can do the problems and get good marks that succeed in the end.
  • javajosh 3y ago
    I think this shows a lack of self-doubt, which can be deadly. Those problems acted as verification to yourself that you understood the theory and its application. If you truly understood the material, then the problems would be zero effort. However, if you struggled with them it's a signal that you don't know what you think you know.
    • TheCleric 3y ago
      As someone who had an a similar experience to whom you are replying to, this was definitely not the case. The problems were easy, but were not "zero effort". Even if it takes you only a few minutes to do the steps and show the work per problem, then that could still take you 30-60 minutes to complete the assignment. That was time I'd spend doing things I wanted to do (fun in the short term, a nightmare in the long term).
      • wholinator2 3y ago
        I think usually the easy problems are just the "burn-in" time to solidify understanding, but there's usually a couple hard problems that take way longer to work through and those will teach you the intuition. Doing simple calculation is different than being forced to conceptualize the entire path from starting information to system to evolution to result.
  • froggit 3y ago
    This is kind of interesting to hear because I was the other way around. I found the best way to understand something was to teach it to others. That way I took what I already understood and was able to see what other people misunderstood, which was often something I'd never expected to be an issue, and add their experience in learning the topic on to what I already knew which expanded my overall understanding. Then again, in the process of teaching I always found myself teaching people to work problems, which required me to be able to work the problems myself. In a way, it's kind of impressive you managed to avoid doing that.
• markus_zhang 3y ago
  It used to pose as a difficulty for self leaners because they did not have access to assignments, exams and solutions unless they register for classes. Nowadays it's a lot easier when there are so many free materials from top school online. And stack exchange and reddit is available almost 24-7 if one ever has a question.
  • Qem 3y ago
    > It used to pose as a difficulty for self leaners because they did not have access to assignments, exams and solutions unless they register for classes. Many textbooks still employ the deplorable practice of not presenting the answer to all exercises at the end, unfortunately.
    • markus_zhang 3y ago
      Yeah, but I think there is a teacher's edition we can grab online from somewhere?
• beltsazar 3y ago
  >> Solving problems is the only way to understand physics. There's no way around it. The reason is that you think you understand what you read, but as Richard Feynman said: > The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. You think you understand 90% of what you read, but in reality it's probably only 20-30%. By doing the exercises, at the very least you'll know that you don't know that much. And if you then reread the materials a few pages before, you'll realize that you have skimmed (or worse, skipped) some parts because you mistakenly thought you already understood it. Another tips from my personal experience: When you're reading a textbook, keep asking in your mind questions with the types of "what if" and "how about," which are sometimes not yet explained in the section you're reading. Also, keep associating what you've recently learned with what you've already known (days ago, years ago). Be curious and validate that you really understand what you think you understand.
  • bmitc 3y ago
    Although, I think what you're describing doesn't completely lie on the reader. Oftentimes, the author has plain just not explained things clearly or even remotely well, and the reader has to play a little bit of 20 questions to get to the meat of something. When a book is properly written, then the shared load between the reader and the writer is much more balanced.
• bmitc 3y ago
  It's kind of a tautology though. Physics isn't remotely special in this regard at all, and it doesn't need generalizing from physics. One needs to work through anything to truly learn it: music, sports, gardening, life, writing, etc.