The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 66, No. 12, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 26, 1978 Page: 3 of 20
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Editorials
The Rice Thresher, October 26,1978, Page 3
mm
To the Editor:
This is intended to reach as
many women on this campus as
possible and it is about
intramurals, of course. This
past week about 3/4 of the
scheduled volleyball matches
were forfeits. Either it was a
busy week for the women of
this campus or apathy in sports
has become an epidemic.
Ms. McFall has tried
extremely hard to expand the
intramural program for
women. In the last 4 years
participation has increased
many times over. Some of this
is due to the increase in
enrollment of women but
basically it has had to do with
the work of Ms. McFall. Unless
women show more interest in
the programs or offer more
input into the program, further
expansion cannot take place.
In fact, with the increase in
forfeits there may well be a
contraction. There has been
talk about an intramural
football program for women
but this can only come about if
there is enough interest.
Powder Puff football starts
this weekend and here is the
chance for everyone to enjoy
this fun and deadly sport.
There has always been an
interest here but afterwards,
participation drops again.
Women play in the men's
leagues in soccer because there
is not enough interest to form a
women's league. The ratio has
nothing to do with the fact that
men's intramural participation
continues to increase.
The women of this campus,
in general, are not apathetic. So
why isn't there more intramural
participation? Come on and
come out to enjoy sports and
help the women's intramural
program becomeoneof the best
in this state.
Pete Schwab
To the Editor:
Although Dale Charletta's
review of the new Talking
Heads' album was the most
intelligent piece about popular
music the Thresher has run in
two years, he completely
ignored their music.
While their lyrics are
certainly interesting (David
Byrne is the only pop
songwriter who concerns
himself with the dominant
force in America-bureaucracy),
their stylistic innovations are
most striking.
Talking Heads' first album
was one of the best disco
records ever released: no
synthesizers, no string, no
boogie-oggie-oggie exhorta-
tions, just clean, spare, witty
danceable disco and rock. In
More Songs about Buildings
n*i// Food, the current release,
they piled layered rhythms
together to create a denser
sound.
A recent appearance at the
Texas Opry House, however,
proved the real surprise.
Talking Heads have eliminated
the two curses of this decade's
rock concerts: long, tediously
self-indulgent guitar solos and
The Wall of Noise. Every note
this extraordinarily tight band
played was heard as a discrete
pulse of sound. Yet, they rock
and rolled through the climatic
Psycho Killer as powerfully as
any group I've ever seen. Now,
if they can only master melody
the way they have mastered
rhythm...
Steve Sailer
SRC '80
Are we teaching our freshmen physics?
Jeff Augen
Rice has a reputation for
turning out competent, well
educated scientists and
engineers. This education is
strongly based on a good
background in mathematics
and the physical sciences. One
of the most fundamental
courses in physical science is
freshman physics (101,102.)
Here students are supposed to
learn the basic concepts of
electromagnetism, concepts
necessary for a complete
understanding of higher level
material.
As it turns out, students are
not getting that understanding.
Instead they attend a class
where the professor writes the
textbook on the board for one
hour each day. Then they are
bombarded with homework
problems they can't begin to
solve. Most students resort to
copying these problems from
someone who was able to solve
them or from the physics tutor.
They come out of the course
having placed well on the curve
composed of other students
who know little about the
material. They may have good
grades, but the grades are not a
true reflection of what they
know since many pass with no
knowledge of physics.
To substantiate these claims,
I decided to take a survey. The
survey was composed of three
questions taken from an
elementary physics textbook.
These questions were one
sentence questions which
required no mathematical
calculations or special
knowledge. They only required
that the student understood the
most rudimentary concepts of
freshman physics. The results
were appalling.
In question one, students
were asked to predict the path
of an electron passing under the
north pole of a magnet. This is
one of the most basic concepts
in electromagnetism. The
problem was illustrated so
there could be no confusion.
Out of 7 students who obtained
an A or better in the course,
only 2 could answer the
question. Half of the B students
answered correctly and 7 out of
7 C students got the problem
wrong. This problem appears
in almost all high school
physics books. It requires only
a simple application of the left
hand rule. No one who passes a
course in electromagnetism
should be stumped by this, yet
out of 20 students, only 5
answered correctly. Further-
more, 2 students could not
answer the question at all and
two students did not even know
the electron would be deflected.
One student obtained an A plus
in the course remembered
doing the experiment in physics
lab, but said he still wasn't sure
what the answer was.
Question two was based on
first semester mechanics.
Students were told that a 10 lb.
monkey was climbing a rope
fastened over a pulley to a 10 lb.
weight. They were asked to
predict which would get to the
top first assuming there was no
friction and both monkey and
weight began equidistant from
the pulley. Again the problem
was illustrated for simplicity.
Since only three choices were
given, random guessing would
allow for 7 correct answers.
Only eight students out of 20
answered correctly. This is
barely better than random
guessing. In fact, most students
admitted to guessing when
questioned about their
answers.
Of the nine students polled
who made an A or better in
mechanics, only four answered
correctly. Only two out of nine
B students knew the answer.
This is one worse than can be
expected from random
guessing. The two C and D
students polled answered
incorrectly- This question
assumed only that you knew
momentum is conserved. This
is a universal law. It is taught to
high school physics students
and re-taught to college physics
students. One student who
made a grade of A plus in the
course exclaimed "that doesn't
apply here." The law of
conservation of momentum
applies to everything in the
universe. It is absolutely
astounding that students of
supposed high calibre do not
know how to apply one of the
most basic laws of physics.
The last question was again
based on electromagnetism.
Rice students did better on this
question than the other two. It
was then discovered that this
question appeared in similar
form on a test last year.
Students were given a hollow
shell of uniform thickness with
a small mass off center, inside
the shell. They were asked to
predict where the mass was
attracted. Only three choices
were given (the center, the shell
and not attracted.) This time
five out of seven A students
answered correctly, five out of
six B students answered
correctly and only three out of
seven C students answered
correctly. There are no
gravitational fields inside a
hollow shell. This is a simple
concept based on Gauss' law.
One student who made an A
plus in the course said that he
knew this worked for
electromagnetic forces, but not
for gravitational forces. As any
physics student should know, it
is the same law.
As a whole the students
surveyed failed miserably. The
average was only 1.45 out of a
possible 3. Random guessing
would produce an average of
.87. Rice physics students,
therefore, did only 19 per cent
better than if they had guessed.
One student who received
grades of B in mechanics and
an A in electromagnetism got
all three wrong. He was
accompanied by another
student who made B and C
respectively. Only one student
was able to answer all three
correctly, he had grades of A
and B respectively. Of the three
students I was able to find who
placed out of the course, none
had any trouble answering all
three questions correctly. Thev
were also able to rigorously
prove their answers.
I am not writing this to be
malicious. I am simply
attempting to make a point
which needs to be made. Rice is
taking good minds which are
eager to learn and wasting
them. This is perhaps the
greatest crime of all...
The Theft of Sammy
Michelle Leigh Heard
The big story during this
week in 1917 was the one about
the recovery of Sammy I from
under the noses of the A&M
student body. The hand-made
bird had been stolen after the
game which the Aggies had
won. There was no guard left
around the Owl and while
everyone was at the dance
following the game, some
cadets slipped away with it.
Sammy's disappearance was
denied in the newspapers and a
new owl was made and shown
in an attempt to keep the
Farmers from exacting an
attempt to recapture it.
Detective Hired
Thirteen men organized
themselves to get Sammy
back, and they took the
detective to College Station
to find his hiding place
They were forced to
abandon the search when
daylight came, but it
was learned later that they
were only two rooms away
from Sammy's hiding place.
A new organization of
seventeen men was formed and
this one sent another detective,
who soon discovered that
Sammy was being kept in the
Armory. The men set out in
three cars and laid their plans
carefully. They got Sammy and
rushed back to Houston at top
speed.
Unfortunately, the car with
the 200 pound Sammy in it ran
out of gas and the guys had to
spend the night in the woods.
At the time, however,
Sammy was not called Sammy.
The Aggies used the word
Sammy as a code word during
their theft and later, the name
simply stuck.
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Heard, Michelle Leigh. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 66, No. 12, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 26, 1978, newspaper, October 26, 1978; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245384/m1/3/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.