Like many other scientists, I regard the discoveries of science to be among the most precious elements of twentieth-century culture, and it seems to me a tragedy that so many otherwise well-educated people are cut off from this part of our culture by a lack of familiarity with the basics of science. Yet this educational gap should come as no surprise. Generally speaking, the student or reader who wants to become literate in physics is offered only one path: he or she must follow the same time-honored sequence of courses followed by generations of professional scientists. Always mechanics comes first, followed usually by heat, electricity and magnetism, light, and, as a savory, a little ``modern physics.'' This may be ideal for those students who plan to become physicists, but for many others it seems an impassable desert. Nor is their feeling unreasonable. We physicists are an odd lot, taking great pleasure in the calculations we learn to do in the standard sequence of physics courses: calculations of the collisions of billiard balls, the flow of electric currents in wires, the paths of light rays in a telescope. It just is not reasonable to expect all students or readers to feel this way, any more than we could expect those who never plan to play the piano to enjoy practicing scales. It seems to me that it is this problem of motivation that presents the greatest obstacle when one tries to write for nonscientists about the fundamentals of physics.Steven Weinberg, from the preface to ``The Discovery of Subatomic Particles''
The above statement eloquently expresses the misgivings many of us feel about current practice in the teaching of the beginning calculus-based university physics course. These concerns have resulted in a movement to reform the teaching of this course. Generally speaking this movement consists of two parts, attempts to change how physics is taught and attempts to change what physics is taught to beginning students.
The teaching of physics is an international rather than a national enterprise; the same textbooks are widely used across the world. However, conditions and modes of teaching differ between countries. Perhaps we can learn something from each other's experiences. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together some of the more creative practitioners of the art from México and the United States in order to exchange ideas about the teaching of physics, particularly the teaching of the first university course for scientists and engineers.
A grant from the Sloan Foundation to the Pan-American Association for Physics (PAFP) funded US participation in this meeting. Many thanks to David Ernst of PAFP for supporting this activity. Thanks also are due to the National Society of Hispanic Physicists for their support and Carmen Cisneros of the Sociedad Mexicana de Física for her help on the Méxican side. A number of individuals from PAFP, including Mario Diaz, Juan Burciaga, Jorge López, and Carlos Ordoñez helped shape the program. Carlos López and Raul Alcántara graciously agreed to translate the abstracts. Very special thanks go to Daniel Jiménez of the ITESM physics department for making the local arrangements.
David J. Raymond