[Fhsst-physics] Comments on Gerald's section

[Mark Horner]

Hi Gerald

Sorry about the delay - from now on add an error of +3 days to any 
statement I make about when I'll get something done.

Right - down to details!

Firstly things are looking good - I think you've done a great job! I 
like that you have examples for all the gas laws, there is some history 
for everything which is nice for interested kids and there isn't too 
much writing - pages of straight text just intimidate them.

I have some specific suggestions (hopefully you will find them 
constructive - feel free to disagree with me - and if anyone else has 
contrary suggestions please send them in):

- in the beginning you mention the melting temperatures of a few 
substances in the text - it might be nice to give them a little table 
with a few common and some not-so-common substance - say carbon because 
we are carbon based, gold because its key to the SA economy, copper 
because they all know copper wire. Not too many - maybe 4 or 5 very 
different substances just so they get a feel for the scope of 
temperatures etc.

- we need to define very simply and clearly intensive and extensive 
properties because that often confuses people - a definition list might 
work - to make sure that they are clear that things are either intensive 
or extensive and what the difference is - the list would make it stand 
out more. Subtle use of language will be lost on many weaker students so 
the we need to choose important things to stand out.

- for the equation definitions - maybe mention at the beginning of the 
equation of state chapter that there are three laws they are going to 
learn about just so its clear that they know which 3 they are combining 
to make the EOS.

- could you make a definition block for each of the equations similar to 
the ones in the momentum chapter (pg 132) in the physics book:

http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst/fhsstphy.pdf

I really like the real world examples like the pressure in a divers ear.

- Under Kinetic theory of gasses - no problem with the first paragraph 
and we are hoping to have some stuff about scientific method early on 
which it will reinforce. I think we must explain somewhere the word 
"empirical" - I am not yet sure when its first use in the book will be 
but I think that your section is the first that has it right now.
I just imagined tht "Any scientific law is an empirical genaralization 
..." might just be too much to handle unless they are clear on empirical 
and generalization.

The same goes for a postulate - could you just put a quick explanation 
in of what a postulate is - it may be removed/moved later but for now 
its not used anywhere else (maybe maths not sure).

- Under pressure of a gas - could you change the curly deltas to capital 
deltas - thats whats been used in other chapters.

Otherwise I think things are looking fine. Your language usage might be 
a bit too high - I need to think about it carefully - we made the 
decision that the language usage could improve over the course of the 
book and this chapter will come later on. Notice that we've tried to be 
extremely simple in the Forces->Gravitation chapters. If you can easily 
make some statements simpler or shorter then it won't hurt but I think 
you are probably ok.

Thanks for a great job, its really coming on.

Cheers,

Mark



                
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