Consider the lowly photon ...

<b>[shando] "... pi ... we can't seem to establish its value."</b>

A good illustration of my point about those parts of reality that have conceptual existence - we are free to conceive of pi either way, or both ways simultaneously, and not be wrong.

Regards,
LB

<b>[shando] "More mal-education if ..."</b>

Yeah, I suppose.

I blame it on the basic tendency of people to be lazy when talking about something with which they are very familliar. It's not that our teachers and scientists don't know that c or G might change tomorrow or might be different over their. It's that they never have changed SO FAR and we get tired of voicing or writing the disclaimer.

And then the new kids come along, never hear the disclaimer, and never think along that line themselves. Then one day, a decade or two into a well paying but not necessarily secure career, they hear someone talking about the possibility that c might change and it scares them.

Even in a free and just world education would not be perfect. But in that free and just world education would be provided by a wide variety of mostly independent organizations rather than being monopolized by a few or one. Since we would be free to choose who teaches us and our kids, at least some of us would be taught about the exceptions and the loose threads. Rather than believing that "nothing important has changed in physics since the 50s", some of us would believe there is lots to be discovered.

LB

Well said LB. I think this might be more serious than just "laziness". I am concerned that mainstream science in this case (redefinition of meter) has confused fact with conjecture (ie: assuming that "c" is a constant everywhere/everytime).

Regarding maleducation, I am too old to do it myself, but I am waiting anxiously for some group of young game developers to come up with something that will change the K-12 educational paradigm - perhaps a game that will educate the players in all the basics as a side-effect of playing it.

I am waiting to see all this web-connected technology used to (a) enable a student to discover their most effective learning modalities and (b) use the learning modes to then help the student discover his/her special (peculiar) talents and develop them to their fullest potential. What a wonderful world that would be!

A good place to start might be an automated on-line tutor for the grade 7 courses. Another approach might be to pay students to achieve certain learning goals - we pay teachers to teach, why not pay students to learn? Give kids a motive and then stand back!

Social interaction that might seem to be missing from a web-based individual learning system could become just another learning objective with structured social experiences available within the student's community, supplementing the on-line part. This might be more effective that the bully-mediated system in use within the school system now.

I haven't quite figured how to replace the babysitter function of the present school system, but I am working on it.

Whoops! Looks like I may have gone off-topic here - sorry.

<b>[shando] "Whoops! Looks like I may have gone off-topic here ... "</b>

That's OK - I deliberately led you astray. Since you seem interested in discussing this I am copying your last post to the Big Science Big Government thread (title: Mal Education/shando) and will reply to it there.

If anyone else is interested, follow us there.

LB

<b>Please keep subsequent discussion HERE focused on more scientific stuff.</b>

By clicking on a more or less random youtube link, I stumbled on this 12-minute video:



It's popular science, but informative, and it's relevant to this topic in several ways.
The video is about the ongoing struggle to define the kilogram as a constant.

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Note the Watt-balance mentioned in the video.
When we consult en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_balance , we (currently) read:

"The principle of the "electronic kilogram" would be to define the value of the Planck constant in the same way that the meter is defined by the speed of light."

So Shando, here we go again.

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Having said that, science needs constants.
Without them, Larry may never have enough signal-strength to place a phonecall near his home.

Thank you Michiel.

That video link was very informative. I guess that if we use an incorrect assumption about certain constants, we will find out eventually. Probably too late.

eg: The cost of emergency backup electricity generators is usually double what it should be. First, there is the cost of the event that causes you to purchase such a device, which is usually greater than or equal to the second cost, which is the cost of the device itself.