I have seen frequently, in the discussion of circular motion, teachers
use revolution and rotation as substitutes of each other, which
causes some confusion among students.

Dileep V. Sathe
Retired Physics Teacher
Pune / MH / India

----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Bolter <sbolter@...>
To: <learning-science-concepts@...>
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 6:09 PM
Subject: LSC: "Social construction of reality"


The "social construction of reality" or perhaps the "social description
of reality" is an important concept.

Different societies describe reality in different ways, which is why
there is seldom an exact one to one correspondence between words in
different languages.

There is a world society of physicists whose way of describing reality
is special in two ways.

Firstly it involves the invention of a very precise language. When
expressed in symbols, the language is the same world wide. Local groups
of physicist give many of the concepts and quantities of physics names
which are taken from words with similar meanings in the local common
language. However when used in Physics, these word are identical in
meaning to the corresponding word in other local languages.

Secondly the description has a large quantitative element employing
measures whose definition is designed for ease of description and the
formation of (explainable) relationships between measures. [For example
our measure of current makes the sum of currents into a junction equal
to the sum of the currents out. Had current have been defined as
proportional to the heating effect, we would have to use the sums of the
square roots of the current in that law of Kirchhoff.]

GCSE and GCE Physics are to a considerable extent entry and intermediate
level entry certificates to this language. What is important is that
examiners stick to the standard English version of the language of
physics and do not expect candidates to learn a special dialect for the
examination, even where the established English Physics language falls
short of the usual precision [for example in the use of the word
"heat"].


Steve Bolter 01 787 - 461 604
Wickham House
Gestingthorpe
CO9 3BH

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