Martin Baxter wrote:
katy wrote:


It's a problem...Mr Sails posed some distance/time/rate problems to his
junior/senior Oceanography classes in meters and kn and they were all
totally lost...didn't even have the sense to just go to the conversion
tables in the back of the book!



How can you teach science and not use SI units? A real fine group of
budding scientists Mr. Sails has there!

As an excercise in frustration everyone should be forced to do a few
basic physics problems using pounds, slugs, poundals, pound-feet. ..etc.

Cheers
Marty

They don't retain becasue it's not used in their real worlds..so
far...the Maths Dept does teach it of course and most of these kids are
either in Algebra 2, Trig, or Calc...yet they can't translate between
the classes..what? a math problem in Oceanography? My God...we thought
this was about water! When some of them found out it was about combined
geology, earth scince and ecology, tehy went ballistic...thought they
were going to go visit dolphins at the Aquarium and collect seashells....