Just to take a small break from our series of science wonders, this post is a reflection of my thoughts. Earlier the other day, I shared one of my posts with a junior ( from college ). He said, "It's elementary 12th class physics, dude". What's the deal? That set me thinking. Why did I find these things so out-of-the-world amazing now? He has a point. I'm sure we learnt all of these concepts way back in school.
Let us rewind a bit ( or a lot bit for some of us, me in particular ) how did we learn these concepts back then? Hold on... Wait... It's all coming back to me. I remember the names of the concepts and then I remember some formulae and then I remember essay questions wherein I had to arrive at the formulae and say "hence proved" and then I remember problems problems and a whole array of problems of the same type, just with different numbers. Problems, where, if I got the second decimal point wrong, I would get a you-let-me-down look from my teacher and a big red zero adorning the page. Did I want that? An obvious no! So what did I do, checked and rechecked my calculations on my worksheet, and made sure I remembered the formulae right. And in the process, forgot to remember the concept involved leave alone appreciate it's beauty!
My point here is not to scorn at our existing education system or for that matter the teachers. I've been lucky enough to have some of the amazing teachers throughout my school life, teachers who were willing to go the extra length to make sure we were taught what was supposed to be taught. I know what a demanding job it is. I have all my teachers high on a pedestal. I distinctly remember one chemistry professor in college. One of a kind I say. All his classes, each of his assignment questions, each of the questions in his question paper, all of them had a reason to be there. Solve a question from his question paper and right there in the middle of a gruelling exam, you get ur awe for the subject. Like I said, I've seen wonderful teachers!
Also, our education system. Their intension of giving us innumerable problems of similar type was just to drive the point home. I agree. And there's a lot of info to learn given the limited time. They designed the best we could do in the stipulated time frame. Ok. Understandable.
Now that my schooling days are done, and now when I happen to read about these amazing things in the Internet , I couldn't help but think, if I had learnt these concepts this way, without textbooks , with the everyday result of success and failure of carefully chosen experiments, would I have shied away from physics the way I did when I was in school?
So, it's not the teachers' fault, not the education system's too and definitely not mine. I realised, instead of lifting a finger to blame and sit back, why not use the finger to type and read about these things in the internet. You know, the World Wide Web is an amazing thing that has happened to mankind. Over these days, when I looked at the various resources out there for us to read, woh!man, was I thrilled. Mind boggling simple experiments, Amazing explanations, lovely animations and videos to aid understanding. The only problem was, too much to read and a lot of places to look up. And I thought, I should share the knowledge I've learnt, in the way I would've liked to learn it, ( with examples and videos and animations and more importantly, no numbers ), all compiled and categorised and organised in one place. I've used numbers and formulae only when I couldn't avoid them, added lot of thought provoking questions, included mind boggling try-at-home experiments, and tried keeping it as interesting as the articles I read to be able to write these.
Now that we have no exams ticking above our heads, let's take our time to understand the wonders of the world around us and bask in our very own "aaaha" moments.
Let us rewind a bit ( or a lot bit for some of us, me in particular ) how did we learn these concepts back then? Hold on... Wait... It's all coming back to me. I remember the names of the concepts and then I remember some formulae and then I remember essay questions wherein I had to arrive at the formulae and say "hence proved" and then I remember problems problems and a whole array of problems of the same type, just with different numbers. Problems, where, if I got the second decimal point wrong, I would get a you-let-me-down look from my teacher and a big red zero adorning the page. Did I want that? An obvious no! So what did I do, checked and rechecked my calculations on my worksheet, and made sure I remembered the formulae right. And in the process, forgot to remember the concept involved leave alone appreciate it's beauty!
My point here is not to scorn at our existing education system or for that matter the teachers. I've been lucky enough to have some of the amazing teachers throughout my school life, teachers who were willing to go the extra length to make sure we were taught what was supposed to be taught. I know what a demanding job it is. I have all my teachers high on a pedestal. I distinctly remember one chemistry professor in college. One of a kind I say. All his classes, each of his assignment questions, each of the questions in his question paper, all of them had a reason to be there. Solve a question from his question paper and right there in the middle of a gruelling exam, you get ur awe for the subject. Like I said, I've seen wonderful teachers!
Also, our education system. Their intension of giving us innumerable problems of similar type was just to drive the point home. I agree. And there's a lot of info to learn given the limited time. They designed the best we could do in the stipulated time frame. Ok. Understandable.
Now that my schooling days are done, and now when I happen to read about these amazing things in the Internet , I couldn't help but think, if I had learnt these concepts this way, without textbooks , with the everyday result of success and failure of carefully chosen experiments, would I have shied away from physics the way I did when I was in school?
So, it's not the teachers' fault, not the education system's too and definitely not mine. I realised, instead of lifting a finger to blame and sit back, why not use the finger to type and read about these things in the internet. You know, the World Wide Web is an amazing thing that has happened to mankind. Over these days, when I looked at the various resources out there for us to read, woh!man, was I thrilled. Mind boggling simple experiments, Amazing explanations, lovely animations and videos to aid understanding. The only problem was, too much to read and a lot of places to look up. And I thought, I should share the knowledge I've learnt, in the way I would've liked to learn it, ( with examples and videos and animations and more importantly, no numbers ), all compiled and categorised and organised in one place. I've used numbers and formulae only when I couldn't avoid them, added lot of thought provoking questions, included mind boggling try-at-home experiments, and tried keeping it as interesting as the articles I read to be able to write these.
Now that we have no exams ticking above our heads, let's take our time to understand the wonders of the world around us and bask in our very own "aaaha" moments.
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