| Description: | [Gluon - The Physics Journal Club] Prof. Anwesh Mazumdar (HBCSE-TIFR) -- Approximations in Physics |
| Date: | Wednesday, Oct 23, 2024 |
| Time: | 5 p.m. - 6 p.m. |
| Venue: | Meghnad Saha Lecture Theatre |
| Details: | Making approximations constitutes a vital practice in physics that poses substantial learning hurdles at the undergraduate and even higher levels. Approximations are often viewed by students as some kind of clever ways of getting around problems which cannot otherwise be solved in a satisfactory way. There is generally little appreciation of the epistemic role of this practice in physics, nor of the fact that it is a systematic exercise and there is a method and consistency in what may appear as ad hoc. We shall present an exploratory study of student understanding of some of the elementary aspects of approximations encountered in college physics. A questionnaire developed at HBCSE for this study will be used interactively to discuss how we deal with these aspects in a variety of contexts, and what are the typical pitfalls in the topic. |
| Calendar: | Seminar Calendar (entered by sangita.jr) |