The Physics (and Grammar) of Feller
Before I begin this assault on the work of my teacher, I would like to accept that this blog is ridden with grammatical errors. I don't proofread entries. Doing so goes against the fundamental essence of blog. The essence of blog is to transmit the "stream of consciousness" from cranium to intelligible bits on a computer with minimal interference. The fact that we have to use language as a medium for this transmission is truly unfortunate--my thoughts would be much better understood if one could "be" my mind for a brief period of time. Nevertheless, language is a necessary evil in this context. In my real work that I turn in for school, I average about 1 grammatical mistake per 4 pages, assuming I do an average level of proofreading and revision. Or at least, that's what my teachers catch.
Moving on to the point.
I've become very frustrated with the general level of stupidity of some of my teachers. It varies from teacher to teacher. With Mr. Wilson, I just argue with him, yell at him, and occasionally call him an idiot. We have a very friendly (seriously, I talk to him at lunch for fun sometimes) relationship of mutual respect. With Ms. McFarlane, I just make every attempt to damage her self esteem by pointing out her numerous mistakes (In our period, it averages about 1 mistake per 2-3 problems. In 1st period, it's more like 1 per problem.), and I offer to perform every problem on the board for extra credit. And then there's Mrs. Feller. She's much worse than Mr. Wilson (at least he actually worked in an industrial lab for a few years), but doesn't have the same sense of humor, so mutual insults tend to have a negative effect. She doesn't make the same grotesque number of blatant calculation and algebraic errors as McFarlane, so slowly and methodically wearing down her confidence doesn't work either. She mystifies me. So for your entertainment and my brainstorming, here are a few quotations from a review sheet that she handed out. All errors are reproduced in earnest:
"Figure 14-1 shows a pulse traveling at a spe3ed of 1.0 m/s...
"A water wave with a wavelength of 7.0 cm and sped of 21 cm/s..."
She never taught the equation for the Doppler Effect, so she decided to throw it into the test review so we could do the problems requiring it. This led to my personal favorite:
"The equation for the Doppler shift of a wave of speed v reaching a motion detector is
fd = fs((v + vd)/(vs - vs))
where vd is the speed of the detector, vs is the speed of the source, fs is the frequency of the source, and fd is the frequency of the detector."
Wow. The Doppler Effect is apparently against the laws of our "Fellerian" physics. Doesn't "Feller" sound suspiciously like "false?" By some stroke of rare luck I think I managed to derive the equation for the Doppler Effect, or at least make it work mathematically by applying conceptualizations from 7th grade. No thanks to her. Remember, this woman went to Brown. Apparently one's acceptance into the Ivy League has little real correlation with intelligence. It's long been my suspicion. My other suspicion was that geophysics majors are the people who couldn't make it as regular physics majors. She majored in geophysics. Maybe I'm going bit extreme...
"While fishing off a boat anchored offshore, you note that the distance between successive wave crests is about 12 m and their seed is 7.5 m/s
a. What is thee frequency of the waves?"
Boo hoo! Now I'm sad. These typos were taken from the first two pages of the review and pages 3-5 don't seem to have any blatant typos as I skim them. Oh well. There's some lighthearted fare for the evening. Tomorrow, I must show this to Zaraza, the teacher who actually has a Ph.D in physics.
Suppose you were really good at physics or math and suppose you were looking for a job. Would you choose to teach High School? Probably not. You'd probably choose a job with better pay or more interesting problems to solve. So it's no suprise that your teachers aren't very smart. You should probably give them a break, accept their limitations and appreciate their strengths.
Zaraza has a PHD???
I've heard that he does. Although I agree with you, there's a difference between not being particularly gifted in the sciences and being unable to perform algebra.