The first time I ever thought about physics was when I was around four or five, I think. My older sister (who eventually also got her undergraduate degree in physics and who, at the time, had a very powerful Hermoine Granger vibe, which she still has) told me that everything around us was made of “atoms and molecules” which she explained were very tiny things. Everything around us, at that moment, consisted of the entire universe, of course, but proximally, a mini-van my mother was driving. I believe we were on Johnston Street in Lafayette, Louisiana, about to turn onto South College Drive. This made an impression on me, obviously, since I seem to remember it in great detail. The upholstery, the metal rails the front seats sat on, the plastic and the glass in the windows suddenly seemed strange in their shared nature of made up of small things. That was the profound part. A more gremlin part of me delighted in knowing this strange fact. Knowing things feels good and cool.
I think an interest in physics is natural for all children, since we all have to come to grips with the patterns of movement of the material world, but the next time I remember feeling really drawn to the discipline is third grade when we did our “natural sciences” section. Very specifically, I remember learning about atoms: electrons orbiting nuclei, and about the strange fact that an electron has exactly the same charge as a proton. I remember learning about anti-matter, and the idea that electrons had anti-particles called positrons. I didn’t know anything about symmetry back then, but I think something about these perfectly balanced little objects hooked deep into my mind.
If there is a very compelling reason why quark charges come in 1/3 and 2/3 chunks I don’t really understand it yet.
Anyway, despite this early fascination with Physics, apart from an interest in science fiction, I didn’t really think much more about it until college, which was a very good time for me, in some ways. I was miserable emotionally, but absolutely thrilled by the ability to just take whatever classes I wanted. And yet, in retrospect, while I flew through physics and math classes and took great pleasure in doing so, I don’t think I really learned all that much physics. It is often said that one of the nice things about physics is that you can write down everything you need to know to solve any textbook problem in the field on a single index card. And that is how it feels looking back. I learned only an index-card’s worth of ideas and those superficially.
Now that I have taught Data Science for a few years I’ve come to understand that learning involves a two step process. The first step is to painstakingly construct metaphors between what you currently understand and the subject matter in question. These allow you to begin to construct an understanding of the relations between the objects of study. But these metaphors are only the first stage. I think many educators believe that education consists primarily in the transmission of metaphors. However, there is a second stage. In the second stage we begin to synthesize genuine understanding of a subject matter on its own terms. In this stage, the metaphors reveal themselves to be misleading, sometimes even genuinely confusing, and we have to develop new language and ideas to accurately capture what we know.
I suppose if we take a larger view, this process continues forever, with each current understanding forming the metaphorical bridge to the next.
This presents challenges to us as teachers. As a teacher we have to be able to maintain the two stages in our minds at the same time, since our goal is to guide the students over the bridge to real understanding. The problem can be that we develop a distate for, or even lose facility with, the original metaphorical structures that are useful for building understanding. I find myself constantly wanting to stop myself during explanations to provide rejoinders, clarifications, and warnings not to take certain ideas too seriously, lest they mislead in the future.