Thoughts on physics, premeds, and being a Clinician

I have been a Sunday night physics clinician for the past few weeks now. For me, it has become of the most rewarding things I do during the week.

I tend to work mostly with Physics 3 students, for they have half their problem sets due on Mondays. Occaisionally we get Physics 8 people on Sundays, but usually a senior takes care of them (I'm definitely more comfortable with Physics 3-level mechanics than Physics 8 level E/M; certainly there are Purcell problems that still make me scratch my head). A lot of the people that I see in the clinic for Physics 3 are sophomore/junior premeds, even though we get some freshman engin people too.

The premeds certainly have it tough. Swarthmore makes its premeds go through a calculus-based intro physics course, whearas at most schools premeds can get away with algebra-based physics. I personally have a strong dislike for the textbook that is being used, Halliday, Resnick, and Walker (I can't say anything about Wolfson/Paschahoff, which they used previously for 3/4). In addition, I think it is fairly universally well agreed that the current instructor is perhaps the worst physics professor at Swat. I hear from the students that they are several chapters behind in lecture from where the problem sets are being assigned. From personal experience last semester I know that this professor is not always good at explaining things, even to more advanced students; it must be hellish for students who aren't used to the concepts and language of physics. The course is moving at an insanely fast pace, nonetheless. The instructor wants to cover classical mechanics, fluids, waves and oscillations, and thermodynamics. In terms of sheer volume of material, it covers at least 1.5 times as much material as the majors' introductory mechanics course, Physics 7. Thus this week's problem set is on work and energy, and it's still 2 weeks to fall break. Where were we with John Boccio in Physics 7 at this point in the semester? I think we were still doing forces. With the first midterm (vectors, kinematics, Newton's laws, work and energy) looming this week, there was a pronounced atmosphere of frustration and exasperation among the Physics 3 students in clinic, especially among the premeds.

This frustration is not a good thing. But it is also not a good thing that at least some of the students we see in clinic are much more concerned about just getting through the course than really learning the material (I think this is more prevalent among the premeds than the engin folks, but this is gross generalization and I'm sure there are some premeds in the class who are genuinely interested in learning physics). rose_garden and I burst out laughing last week when one girl said that she had already spent 2 hours on one problem set and that was way too much. Way too much... when it's for me not unheard of to spend 2 hours or more on a single problem especially if it's one where I get bogged down in nasty calculus and algebra. What frustrates me, sometimes, is that the students just want answers, instead of really taking the effort and learning to think like a physicist, and truly apply the physical principles they are (presumably) learning in lecture.

I have been trying to be the best clinician I can. Sometimes it's embarassing when I start explaining something, and then realize I've made a mistake either in the physics of the problem or what the problem was asking (the instructor has not been good about giving us solutions to the problem sets, and in any case we don't have the textbook in the common room yet so the solutions alone do the clinicians no good). When I work with students, I try to be as Socratic as I can. Ideally I think the best teachers when asked for help poke students in the right direction just enough... not so much that the students don't have to think and work things out themselves, but not so little that they don't get over whatever they were stuck on. I try asking the students questions like "So is the system accelerating, and is there a net force on it?" Then I'll try to nudge them towards figuring it out themselves by asking the right questions. I do try to be like Socrates in that scene from the Meno where he questions the slave boy and leads the boy to the correct solution of a geometrical problem. Maybe I go too far sometimes. I haven't learned just how far to go yet. I still am trying to learn what questions to ask. I think I'm not really telling students the answers straight out, at least not directly; I do make them apply some physical reasoning even if it's within the tight framework of my rather specific questions. Ideally, this sort of thing will help the students come to understand the process by which problems are solved. As for teaching that, I really don't know how now.

Part of it is a confidence thing, too. Many of the students in clinic need encouragement about their own abilities, that they know the answers if they can just ask themselves the right questions. This is especially true given the gross imbalances in race and gender among physicists today. I must do my utmost not to perpetuate a system where huge numbers of women and minorities either drop out of physics or don't even try.

There are some, like blaketh, who greatly dislike the students in lower-level introductory courses like Physics 3. They would have the students essentially whacked over the head and butchered with impossible problems, and textbooks like the Feynman lectures and Kleppner and Kolenkow (not that either book isn't great, they're just a little tough for that level). I would like to think that there is potential in every student enrolled in Physics 3. I would like to believe that every one of them is reachable, that they can all come to learn and admire physics for the beautiful and elegant science that it is. Now I don't mean to say that everyone should love physics or become a physicist, but I think I should at least prevent people from hating it.

Teaching introductory physics is tough. I know I enjoy teaching and want to do it in some capacity in my future career. I would like to take on the challenge of teaching an intro course someday. But for now, as a clinician, I try to do what I can, especially given some of the instructor's deficiencies. I frankly don't know how well I succeed. Someone telling me that my working with them for half an hour was much more beneficial than any of the instructor's lectures really isn't saying much about my teaching abilities. But I try hard. And I hope the students I work with will be willing to do the same. And maybe... some of them will come to see Physics 3/4 as something more than a requirement that must be passed to get an engineering degree or to go to medical school.

Again, no injury meant to anyone who may be a current or former premed, or current or former Physics 3/4 students. These are just some of my thoughts after clinic tonight... And now I must get back to my 112 homework and the problem of the vector potential of a finite current-carrying wire in which I have definitely made some silly little algebra/calculus error that has been eluding me for the longest time.