WHAT?

Last night in methods Barry mentioned that his CT had done the Pendulum lab as a discrepant event.  I was pleasantly surprised.   You wouldn’t think it would be surprising at all, really.  The pendulum lab is perfect for teaching scientific inquiry.  It requires almost no equipment – some string, some fishing weights, a cell phone and something to hang the string from.  A pendulum’s  period is simple to measure, depends linearly on one obvious and easily controllable variable (length), and does not depend at all on another obvious and easily controllable variable (mass).  So, like I say, it’s perfect.  Everybody should use it.

There’s more.  Simple Harmonic Motion is also one of the most basic and universal phenomena in Physics.  Firmly ensconced in classical mechanics it is easily derivable from Newton’s laws, but in its own right it is the foundation of wave mechanics, which in its turn is the foundation for acoustics, physical optics, all of AC electronics including microwave and communications technology and finally the vast majority of modern Physics, including quantum mechanics, atomic and molecular Physics, the standard model and pretty much all of the dozens of unified field theories out there.  Obviously then, Simple Harmonic Motion is an essential part of any Physics curriculum.  So why would I be pleasantly surprised to hear that Barry was teaching it?  Because it is not taught in any of the Physics 1 classes I’ve seen (My CT last semester did teach  it in AP).  And why would it not be part of the curriculum in those classes.  Because it’s not in the standard.  Nowhere. 

Speaking now not as a Teacher Candidate, but as  practicing Physicist and Engineering Manager, I have this to say to the California Department of Education:  “What in God’s name can you be thinking?”