From: "Adrienne Wedepohl" To: jpadayachee@bonbon.net Date sent: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 22:58:32 +0000 COMMENTS ON MEETING AT I-THEMBA ON 27 JUNE GENERAL COMMENTS I thought the meeting was quite useful, and a good start to the process that you have in mind. Although I enyoyed hearing what others were doing in the region, I couldn't help wondering whether that aspect of the meeting was perhaps cutting into general discussion time on proposals for action. How about experimenting with a "brainstorming" format at one of the other regional meetings? This could have the structure of a brief introduction by yourself, as on Thurday, followed by about an hour during which anybody could put forward a proposal for action (topics as well as process) and a BRIEF motivation for this. During this phase, no discussion or criticism of the proposals would be allowed. Somebody up front would be briefly noting the proposals on a flip-chart or overhead transparency. The rest of the time could be devoted to discussion and positive and negative criticism of some or all of the proposals. Probably as many as 95 per cent of the proposals would not be new to the SAIP Council. However, some of the new ones could prove to be interesting, and might not be captured by another process. SOME PROPOSALS FOR ACTION 1 Lobbying government, industry and the general public As physicists, we believe that the work we do is very important to the technological or cultural development of the country. Also, we naively believe that government and industry know how important physics is to technological development. We are wrong. In this country, as in many others, politicians and industrial leaders have only a vague idea how physics contributes to technological development. The situation is aggravated by the fact that there is no single "physical" industry in the way that there is an identifiable "chemical" industry. Proposal: The SAIP to set up a PERMANENT activity to lobby government, industry and the public, using reports and reviews (accompanied by presentations to inter alia DACST and parliament), daily and weekly press, magazines, books, TV and radio. These activities should generally be low-key, sustained and above all ongoing. As many members of SAIP (and others) should be persuaded to contribute to this effort, so as to spread the load. This proposal ties up with the suggestion from the floor on Thursday that we should MARKET physics more. NB. The unexpected success over the past few years of the books by people like Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies, John Barrow and Nartin Rees demonstrates that the intelligent layperson has an appetite for this kind of information. There is other evidence as well. 2 Educating physicists (especially academic physicists) regarding the role of physics in industry and technological development. Most physicists (especially academics) have a very simplisticc view of this role. They tend to see physics as "the" fundamental science, from which technology develops as a next step. Some of the comments from speakers and from the floor on Thursday illustrated this attitude very well. In fact, large areas of technology developed in the past with minimal contributions from physics (civil engineering, much of mechanical engineering, mineral processing). Physics can of course contribute to these and other areas of technology, but physicists should recognize that theirs is only one of several disciplines contributing to this process. In fact, active participants in technological development are in general simply not interested in the discipline or background of their colleagues, but merely in their skills. I have had a fair amount of personal experience of the development of specific products or processes, or the solution of specific problems, where I participated either as a member or as the leader of a team of scientists, engineers and technicians. In all the cases I can remember, Tom, Dick and Harry were chosen as members of the team primarily because of their known and valued skills (which might have been developed after their formal education). The disciplines to which they belonged were normally secondary considerations. At best one can say that physicists TEND to be good problem solvers and lateral thinkers, but an education in physics is no guarantee of these skills. As physicists we should be a little less naive, a little more humble, value the contributions of others and learn to sell ourselves. Proposal: The SAIP should support the introduction of short courses for physicists on the history of technological developoment, with case histories of various innovations. The SAIP should also foster the development of exchange programmes, where physicists working in industry and in academe spend shorter or longer periods in each other's organizations. 3 Introduction of different types of physics course at tertiary level I should like to propose that the SAIP consider persuading one or two adventurous universities to introduce, as an experiment, "different" physics courses, having a lower (or very low) mathematics content. These courses should be aimed not only at non-physics major science students but in some cases at non-science students as well. This is nothing radically new. We already have ancillary courses for biology students, with a reduced mathematics content. The UK is currently experimenting with the idea of physics with less mathematics. In the USA, many universities have unashamedly non-mathematical courses in physics and astronomy, of the "liberal arts" type. I see at least three advantages for courses of this type. (a) Even those students who never went beyond a first course of this type would carry some understanding of physics away with them. If these students later became influential politicians, civil servants or business people it could only be to the advantage of the physics community. (b) Some of the students might become sufficiently interested to go on to a second course, and later become applied physicists of a sort, even if they had limited mathematical ability. (c) A few who were mathematically able might become so interested that they would transfer to a conventional physics course. These would be students who would have been lost to physics otherwise. MISCELLANOUS COMMENTS - I support SAIP Council's intention to learn form similar surveys in other countries, and would urge that as much as possible of this be done. For example, consider the point discussed at the meeting that we could significantly increase the number of physicists if we could persuade more young women to take up a physics career. A few years ago, IOP conducted a survey to determine the percentage of women staff members in university physics departments world-wide. The highest percentage turned out to be in Pakistan. This was a big surprise, given the stereotype that Muslim countries are not supportive of education for women. What is Pakistan doing to bring this desirable situation about? Do we know? - I support SAIP Council's decision to not let the survey become too broad and amorphous - in particular, to stay out of pre-tertiary education. Apart from anything else, I am not sure that our membership could make much of a contribution to the debate on secondary education, judging from some of the remrkably naive suggestions made at the meeting. For example, the idea that physics should be taught as a separate subject in state schools demonstrates a complete ignorance of the situation on the ground. There is already a critical shortage of suitably qualified teachers of even the limited physics included in the physical science curriculum, so where would one find enough teachers for more advanced physics, except in a small handful of state schools? This situation is likely to continue for many years. Peter Wedepohl 30 June 2002