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Re: trivial pedagogy

At 13:12 16/02/99 -0500, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

............
4) Go back to the picture of y=f(x) Call it "a frozen shape".

I call it a "photograph" of the wave.






shape. I still had difficulties in convincing them that they must
subtract when the wave (shape) is moving to the right and add
when it is moving to the left. Why do they often say "plus to
the right and minus to the left" (which is wrong)?


I approach this by marking two "corks" on the wave, close to each other,
and asking which one is oscillating slightly ahead of the other. It's the
one on the left, of course.

Mark


Mark Sylvester
United World College of the Adriatic
34013 Duino TS
Italy.
msylvest@spin.it
tel: +39 040 3739 255