This morning I came across a very interesting letter to the Editor of a very well known Physics Journal. As a former hugh school physics teacher and teacher trainer, It reflected my own point of view.
During my early years of teaching, I had taught both math and physics. At the primary school level Area and Volume concepts are usually included. At the middle school level, Displacement of liquids, buoyancy and Archimedes Principle are brought in.
In math classrooms math formulas such as length × width = area and length × width × height = volume are taught.
In my math lessons, I used to explain using 3D animations how the above mentioned formulae developed.
Once the students grasped the concept, I liked them to appreciate it and prove that these are reliable, by enabling students do a simple activity in which a solid cuboidal object is immeresed in a water kettle full of water. They are asked to collect the water that is overflown in a measuring jar and measure the vollume of water that is overflown.
My students used to be surprised that the calculated and measured volume of water were nearly equal.
I remember having used a story from Pancha Thanthraa to teach liquid displacement and Archimedes Principle in a remote Junior High School in Bhutan where I worked as a Science teacher from 1978 to 1981.
I have had the pleasure of seeing my students not only appreciate the inter-connection of math and science but also know that they can prove many science concepts by doing simple activities and that learning science concepts is fun.
There are very effective science teaching resources like this one.
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