Monday, November 19, 2007

What was the question?

I gave up school physics soon after I ignominiously failed to get some 'experiments' right. I think they were to do with parallelograms of force

It took me quite a long time to realise that school experiments are anything but. The whole point about an experiment is that you do not know the answer when you start. In true science, at least for a good Popperian, a different outcome disproves the hypothesis. Unless you can show that the way you set up your experiment was different from the original in important ways

School physics disappointed me anyway because it seemed to have nothing to do with questions or explanations of things which really interested me - principally stars, radio waves, why water makes a noise

And it may not have helped that I was the only girl & the teacher was principally the boys sportsmaster, filling a hole in the timetable