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Full-Text Articles in Physics
Mathematical Description And Mechanistic Reasoning: A Pathway Toward Stem Integration, Paul J. Weinberg
Mathematical Description And Mechanistic Reasoning: A Pathway Toward Stem Integration, Paul J. Weinberg
Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)
Because reasoning about mechanism is critical to disciplined inquiry in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domains, this study focuses on ways to support the development of this form of reasoning. This study attends to how mechanistic reasoning is constituted through mathematical description. This study draws upon Smith’s (2007) characterization of mathematical description of scientific phenomena as ‘‘bootstrapping,’’ where negotiating the relationship between target phenomena and represented relations is fundamental to learning. In addition, the development of mathematical representation presents a viable pathway towards STEM integration. In this study, participants responded to an assessment of mechanistic reasoning while cognitive interviews …
The Scientific Theories Of Michael Faraday And James Clerk Maxwell, Shannon P. Israelsen
The Scientific Theories Of Michael Faraday And James Clerk Maxwell, Shannon P. Israelsen
The Purdue Historian
This paper explores the role of mathematical formalism in physics theories through an analysis of the work of physicists Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell in the field of electromagnetism. After a brief description of the educational backgrounds of each scientist, their views on the nature of physics theory and its relationship to mathematics are contrasted. Faraday sought a mathematics-free theory to describe the results of his experiments, producing a family of concepts that became the roots of electromagnetic field theory. Maxwell built upon these concepts, giving them robust mathematical expression and incorporating them into one unified theoretical picture. An …