Information that is helpful to everyone

 

The Six Ideas That Shaped Physics package is deliberately not a standard introductory physics course, but rather seeks to address certain important deficiencies in typical introductory courses. Getting to know the Six Ideas course and what it can offer can therefore take some time. The place to start is the Overview page, which provides a quick introduction to the things you need to know.

But even after reading the overview, you may still have questions. We have gathered some of the most common in this section. If you do not see your question below, please use the contact form to send us your questions.

• 1. What makes Six Ideas different?

  A:The answer to this question could be quite long! The short answer is we have rethought everything (the format, notation, style of presentation, the order and choice of topics, the types of explanations used, the homework problems, the homework grading plan, and so on) from the ground up and extensively tested everything over more than two decades to (1) more effectively help students learn to think like physicists, and (2) support instructors in offering an active, student-centered classroom experience. Here is an abridged list of just some of the most important and unusual features of the course design:

  • The course has a unit-based structure, with a six-volume text.
  • One chapter in the text corresponds to one class day at the highest possible pace.
  • The course includes more contemporary physics than in a standard text.
  • Some classical physics topics are omitted to keep the pace practical.
  • The presentation is more highly focused on what students really need to know.
  • The course has built-in support for active learning and peer instruction in class.
  • The course provides built-in support for group learning in recitation sections.
  • The text provides many natural links to possible active demonstrations.
  • We have designed the notation and terminology to be as user-friendly as possible.
  • The text provides explicit instruction in the art of model building and problem solving.
  • Solution frameworks help students organize problems solutions.
  • Designated categories of problems help build different kinds of student thinking skills.
  • In-text exercises (with answers) help students read actively.
  • Chapter overviews help students see the big picture and review efficiently.
  • The text and course design draw on the results of physics education research research.
  • Innovative, web-based computer software supports the course in a number of places.

  and so on! For a deeper discussion of the issues and differences, see the Instructor's Manual.

• 2. Is Six Ideas genuinely effective at teaching physics?

  A:Over the years, and at a number of institutions, we have tested the course's efficacy, sometimes in comparison to control groups and sometimes in comparison to national norms, using evaluation tools such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), the Basic Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (BEMA), the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS). In all of these tests (especially those involving the FCI), students in Six Ideas courses perform significantly better than in traditional courses, even though Six Ideas courses spend significantly less time on mechanics and especially electricity and magnetism than comparable courses. For more details, see Evidence of Success.

• 3. How can I order the texts? How much do they cost?

  A:All volumes of the fourth edition are now available and are in print. One can order the texts directly from McGraw-Hill, from Amazon, as well as other sources. Each printed volume costs about $60, but there are also package deals and an e-book version that are less expensive.

• 4. What is different about the 4th edition?

  A:This edition is based on several years of experience working with the 3rd edition. The main goals for this edition were to (1) correct errors, (2) simplify certain presentations, (3) reorganize the text to provide more even pacing, (4) provide professors with much more flexibility in choosing the level and length of each unit, (5) add problems and put more problems on Connect. The text involves many other changes as well, both large and small in scope. For a much more detailed discussion, see What's New in the Fourth Edition.

• 5. Can one really get students to read the text before class?

  A:A crucial aspect of the Six Ideas course design is that students read the text before class so that they can spend class time doing the kind of activities that educational research has shown is necessary for them to master the ideas. But we all know that students will not naturally do this. One must be quite deliberate in designing course structures that will make this happen. After years of experimentation, we have found several different approaches that seem to work reasonably effectively, all of which base a certain amount of students' grades on responding to various kinds of questions about the reading. No method gives perfect compliance, but evaluations show that these methods make the average student prepare for class about 80% of the time. For more details about these methods, see Get Students to Read.

• 6. Don't the chapter overviews encourage students to skip reading the actual chapters?

  A:Apparently not. During the 2001-2002 academic year, students at Pomona College read draft units with more typical end-of-chapter summaries and units with the 2-page overviews. We asked students to fill out an anonymous questionnaire about this and other features of the drafts. The majority preferred the 2-page overviews (some quite emphatically). However, virtually no one reported (when directly asked) that they read the overviews instead of the chapter: a number in fact commented that reading the chapter was still essential for doing the homework. At Pomona, we have seen no credible evidence that this has changed in 15 years. Even so, when we began to prepare this edition, we also polled some of our most important users about this feature, and were strongly urged to keep it.

• 7. What if I must teach (omitted topic X)?

  A:In order to make room for contemporary physics topics, we had to cut quite a bit of material typically found in standard introductory physics textbooks. We did this mostly by streamlining the presentation so that the chapters included what was really necessary and no more. Even so, we also had to cut certain whole topics to make room. Though we cut some material on fluids, AC circuits, and some other smaller topics, the most commonly bewailed omission was geometric optics, which takes up a lot of space in standard courses, did not really fit into any of the units, and seemed to us to be less relevant to 21st-century students than the contemporary material. In the past, we offered some labs at Pomona that went over the basics of geometric optics for those likely to take the MCATs: this is actually a pretty good way to teach this material. Contact the author for more information about these labs.

  In the future, we hope to make available some free, downloadable materials on this website that cover certain omitted topics that people request most often. Let us know what you need!

• 8. What's with the letters on the back of each volume?

  A:These letters provide a built-in, low-tech classroom response system. The Two-Minute problems in each chapter are multiple-choice conceptual questions that can serve as peer-instruction activities during class. To respond to a specific question, students simply hold up the book and point to the letter in question. We were actually surprised to see with the first edition how easily we could get a sense of how many students were selecting each answer, even in a fairly large classroom (we have seen it used in classrooms with 120 students). The letters A through F and T provide seven possible responses to each question and natural responses for true/false questions. (Some problems also use double-letter answers like AA, BB, etc., which a student can indicate by pointing to the letter with two fingers.) Students can use the Z answer to indicate that they have no clue.

• 9.  What about labs?

  A:We early on decided that lab equipment, facilities, and expectations are so institution-dependent that it did not make sense to try to offer a special Six Ideas lab program. The early developers of the course (especially the author) also did not feel that they had any special expertise or brilliant ideas to offer with regard to a lab program. Finally, at the time that the course was initially being developed, Pomona College had certain special requirements that we needed our lab program to fulfill, which did not necessarily make our lab program one that others would want to emulate.

  Even so, those of us teaching the course at Pomona have, of course developed a lab program to go with the course, and we have tested some interesting labs to go with units R and Q (some of which worked and some of which didn't). If you are really curious, contact us for more information.