Law of Conservation of Mass

[warri0r45]

Ok, I see what you're saying, and you'd be right. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Shinjula]

No probs, I do think its very important that science has a bit of a mini revolution and we throw out a whole bunch of wrong physics and embrace (whats is so far known to be more accurate - I'm not talking about string theory here but the actual stuff thats got a decent amount of evidence behind it) the quantum mechanistic reality of physics.

 

 

 

What I'm talking about is not teaching kids in early education that atoms are tiny balls with other tiny balls (electrons) spinning round them. Not teaching kids that light is a wave, but teaching wave particle duality instead. Not teaching kids Newtons Laws of Motion as truth but as an approximation to relativity.

 

 

 

It may seem a bit odd, and some may even think that children are not capable of grasping it, but I assure you they can and easily too and more most of them find it a more fascinating and curious universe because of it. It seems difficult to grasp only because we ourselves have been very indoctrinated to believe it, from our own early education. But the most important reason is because we have known this stuff is a better picture for more than a hundred years goddamn it and its about time we stopped feeding our kids a bunch of damn lies :) :)

[thrash-boy]

What I'm talking about is not teaching kids in early education that atoms are tiny balls with other tiny balls (electrons) spinning round them. Not teaching kids that light is a wave, but teaching wave particle duality instead. Not teaching kids Newtons Laws of Motion as truth but as an approximation to relativity.

 

 

 

It may seem a bit odd, and some may even think that children are not capable of grasping it, but I assure you they can and easily too and more most of them find it a more fascinating and curious universe because of it. It seems difficult to grasp only because we ourselves have been very indoctrinated to believe it, from our own early education. But the most important reason is because we have known this stuff is a better picture for more than a hundred years goddamn it and its about time we stopped feeding our kids a bunch of damn lies :) :)

 

 

 

i still think atoms are balls with other balls around them lol.

 

could you explain the real description a bit for me im very curious.

[Shinjula]

i still think atoms are balls with other balls around them lol.

 

could you explain the real description a bit for me im very curious.

 

Sure, its all probablilities.

 

Sounds weird I know, but atoms are made from smaller bits, and those bits are only really probably there.

 

 

 

In a bit more detail, things like an electron have a probablility function, which simply give depending on where you look for it, the probablility of finding it there.

 

Its a very different sort of world to the one you are familiar, an objects position is spread out over space, imagine you lost your keys, but instead of them being just in one place, they were in losts of places at once, If you looked for your keys in the kitchen you would always find them there, but if you looked for your keys in the bedroom you would find them there about half the time (even though you knew youd still find them in the kitchen if you looked there). Once youve found them in the bedroom though , obviously you cant then go looking for them in the kitchen - its just if you had looked in the kitchen you would have found them there instead.

 

 

 

Basically everything is made up from stuff thats smooshed around the place according to probablility. And until you actually look at it it stays smooshed, when you start looking at things you fix them in place.

 

 

 

We live in a very strange universe and personally i reckon kids would be very into that. It doesnt have to be explained in details even for young children learning chemistry i think it would help if teachers drew clouds on the blackboard to represent atoms rather than spheres, just those little touches that reinforce the ideas that they may learn about later in life would go a long way towards changing perspectives on science.

[Lenticular_J]

I need to yell at my teacher. I got a bad grade for saying some of this stuff (even though I had no idea what I was talking about). :l

 

 

 

I also think there's something smaller than atoms. I mean, if we were that size, we'd probably fall through the planet. Crazy.

[Lateralus]

I also think there's something smaller than atoms. I mean, if we were that size, we'd probably fall through the planet. Crazy.

 

 

 

I don't know if you just miscommunicated your point, but there are particles smaller than atoms - You've surely heard of at least some of them. Protons, electrons, neutrons. There are others.

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subatomic_particle

[assassin_696]

We live in a very strange universe and personally i reckon kids would be very into that. It doesnt have to be explained in details even for young children learning chemistry i think it would help if teachers drew clouds on the blackboard to represent atoms rather than spheres, just those little touches that reinforce the ideas that they may learn about later in life would go a long way towards changing perspectives on science.

 

 

 

Chemistry would be very hard to teach if we made an effort to represent every drawing as what it really is. The traditional Bohr model of an atom is just that, a model, which works very well for most explanations/experiments at school level. We may not know what an electron is, but organic reaction mechanisms would be very hard to draw if we tried to show the movement of electron clouds, instead of just little dots and positive and negative charges.

 

 

 

My point is, science is just a collection of models developed over centuries to fit the data. Some are more accurate than others. But if you started talking about Einsteinein curvature and tensor fields when trying to explain gravity to schoolchildren you're just going to confuse them. I think you should stick to the models that they could easily understand and get to grips with.

 

 

 

I would certainly applaud the introduction of any science syllabus which aims to give children an awareness of science beyond their syllabus, but since there's no way to teach that science at a level where they will understand it anything beyond a basic awareness is probably a waste of time. We both know that Newtonian classical mechanics can be developed to a level that goes way beyond most special relativity courses. And since you can't understand special relativity unless you know something about Newtonian mechanics, it makes sense to give them a firmer grounding in that before confusing them with Lorentz contractions and time dilation.

[fastortoise]

I was only introduced to time dilation two weeks ago in class, and I must agree with Assassin: there's no way people in elementary or even high school will understand any of this stuff. Even the mention of length contraction or slowing down time will blow this minds. A couple of my friends didn't understand the concept until just the other day, and they're pretty smart!

 

 

 

And just to backup Assassin again, I don't see anything wrong with presenting generalized models to younger students. It's what helped me compare the nuances with all the new quantum physics. Without that strong foundation of Newton's Laws or the simplified model of an atom, quantum physics introduced "straight-up" would make me cry.

[Shinjula]

No I'm sorry but thats just daft. Yes obviously I'm not suggesting we give precise descriptions of quantum mechanical processes to 7 year olds. But clearly you didnt read the last paragraph which says the sort of thing I *AM* talking about.

 

Showing the electrons as a fuzzy blob instead of a precise sphere is not a difficult thing to do. And it starts the process of teaching people about the correct view of the universe. People really do think that atoms are spheres of material and its wrong, you know its wrong just as much as I do, why would you want to perpetuate this sort of thing, when there are plenty of small ways to easily illustrate the correct view?

 

 

 

A good example of correct viewpoint easily adapted to the classroom is benzene. When benzene rings are drawn in chemistry they're draw as a hexagon with a circle in the centre, as opposed to how they could be draw as six double bonds, the circle reminds people that the electrons are disassociated. This is how benzene is always shown including in high school (and earlier) chemistry where a good description of what's happening is easily encapsulated in a tiny drawing.It's this sort of thing I'm talking about introducing to physics.

 

 

 

Re Time dilation, what I'd suggest is renaming 'Newtons Laws' to 'Newtons Approximations', there's simply no cause to call something a law which is known to be untrue. Its not a radical step, it would change little except serve to remind students exactly what sort of information they are learning.

 

As for blowing kids minds away, that is purely because of the fact that you've been taught from an early age the the universe is newtonian, which is why it comes as a complete shock. As an experiment when my niece was 5, I taught her all about lorenz contractions, to see how well she did and to see how much of it she would accept, and I was blown away that she just completely took it and ran with it. I obviously didnt derive it for her or go through any of the maths, but just the basic stuff like speed makes your length decrese, mass increase and time increase relative to an observer, because of the relativity your time is different to their perspective on it, mass and energy and the non existence of simultaneity. And she had absolutely no problems with it all, in fact she spent the entire afternoon running round the garden trying to get shorter. Now shes ten and started some physics its just part of her world view, she accepts it as reality. Its not just some addition to be added on when she gets to A Levels, when she gets to A levels what will happen is that she'll learn some useful approximations to the real world (Newtons Laws) that she can use to calculate things at speeds far lower than c, while maintaining in her head the 'reality' of the universe.

 

 

 

I cant really comment easily about organic chemistry, as its something Ive done quite badly at in the past, i would guess that what your talking about is the symbolic stuff, which I dont really have a problem with, the symbols are representations, with things like C for Carbon and O for oxygen there is no confusion as far as I'm aware (I can't imagine many kids think that a carbon atom is actually shaped like the letter C), but perhaps you are talking about something else and I'm missing the point there, in which case could you explain a little more?

 

But if we are talking about anything more complicated that what I've mentioned I'm not sure you'd find it in a high school syllabus anyway which is really the area I'm talking about. I'm not so fussed about things being so correctly described (at least pictorially) at undergrad level (or even A level) as by that time students have matured enough to understand representations correctly. It really is for young children that this needs to get fixed.

 

 

 

But please feel free to debate more, and apologies if this has hijacked the thread a little.

[assassin_696]

No I'm sorry but thats just daft. Yes obviously I'm not suggesting we give precise descriptions of quantum mechanical processes to 7 year olds. But clearly you didnt read the last paragraph which says the sort of thing I *AM* talking about.

 

Showing the electrons as a fuzzy blob instead of a precise sphere is not a difficult thing to do. And it starts the process of teaching people about the correct view of the universe. People really do think that atoms are spheres of material and its wrong, you know its wrong just as much as I do, why would you want to perpetuate this sort of thing, when there are plenty of small ways to easily illustrate the correct view?

 

 

 

This links in with your last question about organic chemistry. I'm referring to reaction mechanisms such as electrophillic addition or nucleophillic substitution. In these mechanisms we represent the movement of electrons by curly arrows from two single dots to a carbon atom, or whatever. My point is that of course we don't really mean that what we have is two precisely defined electrons following a well defined path to a single atom somewhere, it's just a model that broadly represents what's going on. Of course we could show the movement of electron clouds, maybe show the electrons exploring all possible paths, draw everything with an associated probability wave, but I think you'd agree that this would be preposterous.

 

 

 

My point wasn't that you should keep people blind to what's really going on in the physical world. My point is that it would be crazy to represent everything as what we really think it is.

 

 

 

A good example of correct viewpoint easily adapted to the classroom is benzene. When benzene rings are drawn in chemistry they're draw as a hexagon with a circle in the centre, as opposed to how they could be draw as six double bonds, the circle reminds people that the electrons are disassociated. This is how benzene is always shown including in high school (and earlier) chemistry where a good description of what's happening is easily encapsulated in a tiny drawing.It's this sort of thing I'm talking about introducing to physics.

 

 

 

That's a little different to introducing children to relativity/quantum mechanics though. The structure of benzene was "changed" because people found that it didn't really behave like it should if there were three single double bonds, and that a ring in the centre fitted better with the observations. That's progress in science, but it's a fairly low level. It's not really the kind of paradigm change that relativity of quantum mechanics requires.

 

 

 

Re Time dilation, what I'd suggest is renaming 'Newtons Laws' to 'Newtons Approximations', there's simply no cause to call something a law which is known to be untrue. Its not a radical step, it would change little except serve to remind students exactly what sort of information they are learning.

 

As for blowing kids minds away, that is purely because of the fact that you've been taught from an early age the the universe is newtonian, which is why it comes as a complete shock. As an experiment when my niece was 5, I taught her all about lorenz contractions, to see how well she did and to see how much of it she would accept, and I was blown away that she just completely took it and ran with it. I obviously didnt derive it for her or go through any of the maths, but just the basic stuff like speed makes your length decrese, mass increase and time increase relative to an observer, because of the relativity your time is different to their perspective on it, mass and energy and the non existence of simultaneity. And she had absolutely no problems with it all, in fact she spent the entire afternoon running round the garden trying to get shorter. Now shes ten and started some physics its just part of her world view, she accepts it as reality. Its not just some addition to be added on when she gets to A Levels, when she gets to A levels what will happen is that she'll learn some useful approximations to the real world (Newtons Laws) that she can use to calculate things at speeds far lower than c, while maintaining in her head the 'reality' of the universe

 

 

 

Well now we're getting into the deep question of what constitutes a physical law and where you draw the line. Einstein's laws might improve on Newton's, but ultimately Einstein's laws are just approximations too to some deeper theory. This could be emphasised and realised simply through a thorough teaching of what science is, and how it constantly seeks to make better approximations to the truth. Children learn physics through experiments that they can do themselves, and in these kind of laboratory scale experiments relativistic and quantum mechanical effects are utterly negligible, so what point is there in bringing them up? If physical laws are simply theories that fit with the truth, then Newton's laws work just as well as Einstein's in school experiments, so those would be the correct ones to teach. In what sense are Newton's laws any less correct than Einstein's at the scale of v<

 

 

 

For me at least, understanding in physics comes about through seeing the experiments and working through the theory mathematically, but primarily the latter. I think it's great that your niece has an awareness of relativity, but to be frank there's no way she could have the mathematical understanding of the theory to constitute what I consider true understanding of it. You can tell a child that the gravitational force between the two objects is proportional to the product of their masses divided by the distance from their centre of masses squared, but until they've played around with the equations and tried out different examples I wouldn't say that they really understood it. Understanding at a quantitative and qualitative level are two different things. I understand a lot qualitatively, but probably not very much quantitatively. And it's quantitative models that are tested against experiment and confirmed.

 

 

 

I might also argue the case for the wonderful revelation that comes about when learning about "modern physics" when you have an appreciation of classical physics. It truly is a brilliant moment when, thinking you know so much about physics, come to learn that this is barely the tip of the iceberg. I don't think 10 year olds could have an appreciation for that.

[Shinjula]

You seem to be expanding the few areas I mentioned which I thought could do with an overhaul to absolutely everything, that's not at all what I said.

 

 

 

I never said everything must be represented precisely. I'm am not remotely suggesting changing the way symbolic equations in chemstry are represented, with no knowledge of the subject I would have no idea what I was doing.

 

I'm merely talking about reinforcing certain ideas about the reality of the quantum mechanical world, really really simply things to be done in the classroom in early science teaching. Like when you are 'drawing' an atom on a blackboard, not drawing it made out of spheres but of fuzzy areas.

 

Renaming Newtons Laws to Newtons approximations seems also quite reasonable to me, we know they aren't representative of whats happening so why on earth would we call it a law?

 

 

 

As for kids not understanding relativity simply because they cant handle the maths, thats simply not true, theres many degrees of understanding. Take, for instance, gravity. A child can easily be taught the gravity is not just things fall downwards, but that things attract each other without having to know anything about the equations that govern the relationship, when they are older and can get a grasp of the idea of mass, they can then learn that it is mass and distance which create the relationship between the force and the objects, and then later on they can discover the inverse square relationship. They dont suddenly acquire understanding of gravity in the very last stage and up to then there was no understanding, its steps of simple to complex pictures.

 

 

 

Obviously the simple pictures are going to convey less information and will by neccessity be in many senses wrong, and I'm not suggesting it can be done any other way.

 

However, if we can give them a slightly better map to the universe with the simple changes to the way it is taught, then lets do that.

 

 

 

From what I've observed of my neice, she genuinely does have an understanding of relativity comparable to her understanding of optics and forces, shes not old so these understandings at a primitive level, but when the time comes (if she chooses those subjects) for her to learn about relativity she is not going to be remotely surprised, she will just go "Oh so thats the equation that governs that then." and she wont need any paradigm shift.

 

 

 

I dont agree with your argument for "the wonderful revelation", if that were the case we might as well teach our children about the four humours in biology as the basis for life, so that when they eventually get to the point where they learn the truth about how the body works they will also have a wonderful revelation abuot how much medicine has progressed. From a more sensible perspective, consider there are multiple reactions which occur, although the wonderful revelation does occur, and much much more common reaction is that of "So you were lying to us?", a reaction I've seen so many times in classrooms. It's not neccessarily rational, but it is responsible for a lot of people turning away from science because they feel they cannot trust it. (Obviously there is another half of that in teaching correctly that it is the scientific method which is important there is no objective truth - but in tandem with that they do still need to be taught with an eye on the latest science)

[Lenticular_J]

I also think there's something smaller than atoms. I mean, if we were that size, we'd probably fall through the planet. Crazy.

 

 

 

I don't know if you just miscommunicated your point, but there are particles smaller than atoms - You've surely heard of at least some of them. Protons, electrons, neutrons. There are others.

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subatomic_particle

 

A little bit of miscommunication. I meant something that makes up atoms on a smaller scale than protons and neutrons and such. Something that makes up protons and neutrons.

 

 

 

And maybe something makes that up.

 

 

 

And something else makes up whatever that is.

[purfishx]

FFS, I was feeling great when I read the first page with all the Biology because I'm actually good at that but then I read the 2nd page with all it's ...*shudder* chemistry, ughhhhh....

[Shinjula]

 

A little bit of miscommunication. I meant something that makes up atoms on a smaller scale than protons and neutrons and such. Something that makes up protons and neutrons.

 

 

 

And maybe something makes that up.

 

 

 

And something else makes up whatever that is.

 

Are you thinking of perhaps quarks?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark

[Shinjula]

 

A little bit of miscommunication. I meant something that makes up atoms on a smaller scale than protons and neutrons and such. Something that makes up protons and neutrons.

 

 

 

And maybe something makes that up.

 

 

 

And something else makes up whatever that is.

 

Are you thinking of perhaps quarks?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark

[Lenticular_J]

Ooo, that works.

 

 

 

Now to find what makes those up.

[Shinjula]

I think at that point your looking for the various string theories, String Theory, Brane Theory (or M-Theory) and Supersymmetry.

 

 

 

However (no offence religious peeps) at that point we really arent talking science, any more than creationism is science since none of it is testable with current tech.

[fastortoise]

I know the answer has already been given, but I believe we've all looked over one crucial element: water. Sure the plant grows by converting nutrients and all that jazz, but every living thing is made up of 70-95% water. That's where all the mass comes from.