Physics. I'd forgotten. Probably your chemistry was like mine, because they changed the chemistry and physics just before I got to them. Those are usually high school subjects, where math starts in primary school. PSSC was the acronym for the secondary school science program changes, but I don't remember what it meant.
In the case of physics, we called it "skateboard" physics because we spent a whole semester rolling blocks of wood on wheels, with "ticker tapes" attached to them, then measuring the gaps between the dots on the tapes and doing math to figure out how velocity, acceleration, and mass were related. Many people found the math extremely difficult, but that was because they approached it graphically and tried to reduce it to figures and formulas by looking at the graphs.
I can understand the desire to teach the underlying concepts, but I'm not sure this worked for most.
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Date: 13 Apr 2006 21:06 (UTC)In the case of physics, we called it "skateboard" physics because we spent a whole semester rolling blocks of wood on wheels, with "ticker tapes" attached to them, then measuring the gaps between the dots on the tapes and doing math to figure out how velocity, acceleration, and mass were related. Many people found the math extremely difficult, but that was because they approached it graphically and tried to reduce it to figures and formulas by looking at the graphs.
I can understand the desire to teach the underlying concepts, but I'm not sure this worked for most.