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The Physics Teacher -- January 2012 -- Volume 50, Issue 1, pp. 42

Creativity and Introductory Physics

Ildefonso (Fonsie) J. Guilaran

Union University, Jackson, TN

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When I was an undergraduate physics major, I would often stay up late with my physics major roommate as we would digest the physics content we were learning in our courses and explore our respective imaginations armed with our new knowledge. Such activity during my undergraduate years was confined to informal settings, and the first formal creativity assignment in my physics education did not come until well into my graduate years when my graduate advisor demanded that I write a prospectus for my dissertation. I have often lamented the fact that the first formal assignment in which I was required to be creative, take responsibility for my own learning and research objectives, and see them to completion during my physics education came so late, considering the degree to which creative attributes are celebrated in the personalities of great physicists. In this essay I will apply some of the basic concepts as defined by creativity-related psychology literature to physics pedagogy, relate these concepts to the exchanges in this journal concerning Michael Sobel's paper1 “Physics for the Non-Scientist: A Middle Way,” and provide the framework for a low-overhead creativity assignment that can easily be implemented at all levels of physics education.

© 2012 American Association of Physics Teachers

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank David Ward for prodding me to write this article and Rebekah Montgomery for allowing me to include a picture of her extraordinarily creative Relativity Science Kit.

KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords

educational courses, further education, physics education

PACS

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

0031-921X (print)  

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef American Association of Physics Teachers

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.3670085

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