Peter A. Beckmann

Current Curricular Interests

Peter Beckmann

Curricular interests

October 2007

Physics for Non-science students.  I teach "conceptual physics" but it deals as much with evolutionary biology as it does with physics.  We adopt the philosophy that we are mammalian bipeds wandering the planet trying to make sense of our surroundings.  Thus we build models.  The texts include Abbott's Flatland, Wells' the Country of the Blind, Borges's the Library of Babel, and Kafka's Metamorphosis.  The world-wide web is used extensively.  We put "understanding" general relativity and quantum mechanics into the same realm as we put "understanding" Duchamps' "Nude Descending a Staircase' or Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.

Upper-level undergraduate physics.  The challenge for the university physics department with a serious graduate-studies-bound-undergraduate major is to teach students how to learn.  There is a real need to introduce more late twentieth-century physics (many-particle quantum physics, general relativity, non-linear dynamics, field theory, string theory, etc.) and to introduce more technology (computer hardware and software, learning via the world-wide web, laboratory instrumentation, computer-instrument interfacing etc.) but in a meaningful way and not for its own sake.

Primary and secondary school physics.  From 17 years ago to 9 years ago, I taught science in a local primary and secondary school over an eight-year period.  I learned that all concepts discussed in college-level introductory physics courses can be handled in second grade so long as the sessions are interactive and fun.  The teacher must strip away all jargon.  The goal is to convince public school authorities that if physical science were taught every year from kindergarten, we could develop a scientifically literate public.  Although I have not been involved over the last 9 years (my older children are now 21 and 25), I also have a 6-year old son and I look forward to phase two beginning in a year or so.