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A Physicist’s Musings on Teaching About Energy

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Teaching and Learning of Energy in K – 12 Education

Abstract

This chapter discusses the concept of energy as viewed from the perspective of a particle physicist and discusses implications for the teaching of energy. A major conclusion is that there are many ways the term energy is used across the disciplines, and students cannot be expected to make connections between them if they are not aided to do so by explicit discussion of the relationships and differences between the usages.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “…in physics today we have no notion of what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. It is not that way.” (Feynman et al. 2011, pp. 4–1).

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Acknowledgement

I acknowledge helpful comments from David Hammer and Joseph Krajcik that have influenced the final form of this article. I also acknowledge the careful editorial work of David Fortus, Knut Neumann, and Allison Scheff who have much improved the clarity and added some needed references to a literature that I do not know well.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Helen R. Quinn

Authors
  1. Helen R. Quinn
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Helen R. Quinn .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental, Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Robert F. Chen

  2. Education and Human Development, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Arthur Eisenkraft

  3. Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    David Fortus

  4. College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

    Joseph Krajcik

  5. Leibniz-Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN), Kiel, Germany

    Knut Neumann

  6. San Antonio Children's Museum, San Antonio, Texas, USA

    Jeffrey Nordine

  7. Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Allison Scheff

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Quinn, H.R. (2014). A Physicist’s Musings on Teaching About Energy. In: Chen, R., et al. Teaching and Learning of Energy in K – 12 Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05017-1_2

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