Maths in Physics, What’s the Point?

We discuss what’s gone well and badly this week with guest presenter Cara Wood and then chat about James de Winter’s thoughts on Maths in Physics teaching.

Timestamps

• Introducing the Survey @ 01:45
• What’s gone well and badly this week? @ 02:46
• James de Winter interview @ 08:50
• Post James chat @ 25:12

Summary

Cara Wood (she of the plucky string in episode 27) steps in for Patrick Kaplo to share her thoughts about what has gone well and badly this week. James de Winter then talks about Maths in Physics teaching: what can learned from the Maths department and the challenges Physics Teachers face. He mentions research by the ASE about cooperation between Maths and Physics departments and also Ed Southall’s book “Yes, but why?”. He also talks about how he has used numberless graphs and suggests a question you can ask yourself before each activity: What’s the point?

Cara reminded Thomas about the graph scale selector, but we couldn’t find a link to an example, can you?

Join in!

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

Music

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.
• Seasons 5 and 6: Crescents by Ketsa.
• Seasons 3 and 4: Disco Sheik by Podington Bear.
• Seasons 1 and 2: One legged equilibrist polka by Circus Homunculus.
• Occasionally we also use Cantina Rag by Jackson F. Smith.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License