OPPORTUNITY TO TEACH CONCEPTUAL PHYSICS FROM A NEW ANGLE -

The Physics Behind Computers and the Internet

Dear Physics Educator:

You might be interested in teaching a course next year based on a prepublication version of a text I have written called The Silicon Web: The Physics Behind Computers and the Internet. I have used drafts of the text for a course I developed at the University of Oregon. It is designed to be a single-term class (although it could cover two terms) with no prerequisites, which may be the only college physics course some students take. The class, a liberal-arts science course, is often taken by students to fulfill a general science requirement. The course and book are for students who have preparation in high-school level science or math. Most of the students who take this course are arts, humanities, and business majors-i.e., the same students who would otherwise take a conceptual physics course using texts such as:
Conceptual Physics, by Paul Hewitt
Physics: Concepts and Connections, by Art Hobson
How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life, by Louis Bloomfield
Physics for Future Presidents, by Richard Muller

Very few other schools, if any, teach a course on the Physics Behind the Internet. On the other hand, it should be possible to use the text in the place of other texts such as those listed above, in courses in which instructors have flexibility to choose their text.

Here is the Overview, the Table of Contents, and a sample chapter. If you would like to see more, I will soon be posting the full text on this website. Let me know if you would like to access it.

Sincerely,

Michael G. Raymer
Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Department of Physics and Oregon Center for Optics
University of Oregon
raymer@uoregon.edu

The Physics Behind Computers and the Internet

The course is not about computers, but about physics. (It is also not about how computers are used in physics.) Specific knowledge about computers or computer science is not required to teach this course. The text is based 90% on basics physics material that any physics professor already knows, and the other 10% are topics that I easily picked up by a little reading, and that are completely explained in the text. Any physics professor should be able to absorb the material instantly (assuming of course that I did a good job of writing).

The purpose of the approach is to draw students into a physics course within a specific context - the fascination of how computer hardware might work, from first principles. This serves two goals - it draws them into a course they think will be interesting and useful, and it provides real working examples of the physics they are learning in a relevant, unified context. They get to see that much of what physicists know about the world goes into the physics of making of computers.

The text also contains brief sections on the Social Impacts of Science and Technology.

Another instructor and I have taught the course, The Physics Behind the Internet, for the past six years, with success. Typical enrollments are 50 students per term for one or two terms per year. Student responses were overwhelmingly positive. Some student responses from official course evaluations are quoted below.

The publisher wants to find several universities or colleges who would like to test the text in its draft form by using it in a course. They explain that this can be fun for the students, who are encouraged to find as many errors in the text as they can. The text will be published by University Science Books (http:// www.uscibooks.com/), the publisher of the widely adopted text, An Introduction to Error Analysis: The Study of Uncertainties in Physical Measurements, by John R. Taylor, University of Colorado.

Excerpt from Overview:
"The Silicon Web is written to teach science appreciation, rather than how to do science. In a music appreciation class, students learn about the elements of music, how music developed, and what makes music high-caliber, but they do not learn how to compose music themselves. In this text, students will learn about the concepts of physics and a little about information science, how they developed historically, and how they are related. Students need not learn how to solve complicated mathematical problems based on Coulomb’s law or Newton’s laws, but it is important that students realize physics is important, relevant, and maybe even “cool.”

In this regard, Paul Hewitt’s comments in the Preface to Conceptual Physics are therefore pertinent: “I’ve always seen overemphasis on problem solving as the major folly in physics instruction. … when the focus of a course is learning the techniques of solving algebraic problems, the allure of physics is degraded.” While Hewitt’s book is well-written, it is broad in coverage and thus unappealing to students who would like to gain a more practical understanding of physics. By trying to cover essentially all the major topics in physics, with no particular goal in mind except to learn a little about everything, it becomes hard to maintain a story-like narrative. The Silicon Web strives to focus on the narrative of physics as it relates to information science and technology, and allows students to gradually see how these build up, concept by concept, and device by device, into the fantastic structure we call the Internet. To today’s college student, computers and the online world are a more fundamental part of everyday life than balls rolling down inclined planes and satellites flying overhead; thus, The Silicon Web’s approach will appeal to more students, helping them to better understand basic physics and appreciate how it applies to the world around them."

Student responses to the question: What did you like most about this course?

"Learning about the different internal workings of a computer not normally looked at, such as the atomic properties of the 'computer building blocks'"
"The material was presented in a way that was easy to understand."
"I liked the subject matter. I had no idea the importance of physics until this course. He showed how physics is connected to everything."
"I had no understanding of physics before taking this course and he made it very easy to understand on the elementary level."
"I liked its conceptual focus, and the abundance of good examples and demonstrations used to illustrate the concepts."
"That I learned so much. This class was totally not what I expected - it turned out much better. I like the many subjects/topics we covered.
"Everything was very clearly outlined in the draft text. I felt very confident with the clarity with which material was presented. The demos were awesome - great job. Related course materials to real-life applications. Cool!"
"I really liked learning the abstract ideas like quantum physics and things that we use on a daily basis."