I noticed a similar thing in math. When I went to university, they taught us all the fundamental rules to how math operates and everything in high school math made a LOT more sense. The rules aren’t that hard to grasp, some could even be understood by elementary schoolers, yet they are restricted to advanced mathematics courses in university, long after most people have decided they hate math
That’s because most high school math teachers don’t really understand university level math such as calculus. The education system treats students as products on assembly line, assuming if the teacher capable of solving high school math problems then he/she can teach high school math. But the fundamental concepts and methods of calculus should be and can be planted to students’ mind as early as junior school. Math teacher who can appreciate the beauty of calculus, would try to introduce the taste to kids as early as possible. But if him/her self does not know the taste, he can’t tell others about it.
Exactly. A few months ago my little sister had trouble understanding where the formula for calculating the area of a triangle comes from. It was only when I showed her by cutting a piece of paper, that you can double a triangle to a paralellogram and then cut that and arrange it into a rectangle that it made sense to her. It's really frustrating that schools force studens to learn unintuitive formulas, instead of just using such visual proofs which can be done in mere minutes.
@@rismosch in that way, the ancient Greek methods make a lot of sense. All proofs were geometric and never relied on measurement or numbers. They have their limits, but can be far easier for children to understand for basic proofs. That’s another thing missing from pre university math: proofs. Mathematics is a system of logic but it’s treated like a bunch of formulas to memorize. People get upset about “show your work” because its just added on to finding the answer. I only knew why the quadratic formula worked because my math teacher had a poster of the proof on her wall, but in college math we mathematically derived all the theorems we used in class, in class!
Remember while a useful interpretation they are still models and not an exact representation as most things in the universe doesn't have a visible image. We experiment, measure, and analyze the data then we take that and compile it into terms we can understand, like visual representation and models.
This is exactly how I learned my high school chemistry and other stem subjects. Besides learning all the principles and examples the textbook and my teacher talked about, I'm always curious to find the fundamental principles behind each instance, such as the interactions between different parts of a molecule. I'm glad that I realized this early in my academic career, and thank you Eugene for sharing this most significant and original idea that everyone should pursue when learning a stem subject.
I see myself as lucky enough that I found your channel in my exploration journey of physics here on UA-cam! Thanks a lot for making such videos for us!🥰🖤
I agree. As a technical trainer in the automotive trade and a student of mechanical engineering, your videos have helped me immensely, and in turn helped me better teach others using fundamental laws rather than the textbook approach.
Being able to form a mental picture of something abstract is very difficult for most people, and it's not even limited to just physics. Reading a book that describes what a character looks like can result in each person forming a vastly different view of what the character actually looks like, but being able to see a picture of the character eliminates that difference. The way physics is taught, you're told the mathematics first and then expected to pick up the mental picture later on. Because the mental picture is the hard part, students don't usually pick it up and only ever pick up the rules of the math involved. This is exactly backwards from how you should learn. Your understanding from "seeing" what's going on should come first and the math follow naturally from that. Starting from the math and trying to "work backwards" to what's actually happening is what students seem to struggle with, which is perfectly reasonable, considering it's backwards from how mathematics and physics were developed in the first place.
True. I struggled and never consciously ever pictured the problems. Instead just solve the problem on paper based on my memorized formulas and practiced examples
This! You nailed the point! Mathematical language is basically a spectrum of extremely precise and rigorous words, put on very abstract, subtle and deep motifs/patterns Making students learn these mathematical words by heart and manipulate them but without having ever observed the abstract motifs: it is just pure nonsense, which takes no consideration about how mathematics are constructed&developed / where they come from. It is thus absurd, and has nothing mathematical. And will obviously accomplish nothing except disgusting many poor souls from mathematics. But sadly it is the most common approach.. (if you have really good teachers it can compensate and turn out nicely, but otherwise..) Anyway, you really nailed the point. Really great and refreshing to see people finally pointing this out!
You're a truly great teacher Eugene. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. Also, shout out to Kira for her masterful narration. You two are a brilliant team!
This video said it all how I always expected to be taught in my schools. It always makes me sad when I can solve a lot of problems without understanding and feeling those problems intuitively. I am your one of the oldest subscribers and I am thankful for your contribution on that. Faith restored. Also, I think the trend's been changing and others UA-camrs are also trying their best on this.
One of the reasons why physics (or maths) is not taught in the most effective way possible might have something to do with how universities / colleges work: for one, teaching is usually not a priority compared with research in top unis. Professors don't have enough time to prepare better teaching materials, and they usually end up reusing past teaching materials instead. After all, teaching *is* difficult: the incredible animations that you made took a LONG time, and that's not even counting the time it takes to come up with the intuition in the first place!
Thanks for the compliments about my animations. I think a large part of the problem is that many professors only know how to teach the same way that they themselves were taught. That is, they often don't even realize that any other method is possible.
I love the idea of this but as a teacher I have to say it is difficult to teach the basic principles well. These videos are very good thanks for them, I used them regularly.
@@wizard7314 You're question is rather telling, according to Eugene examples does not teach basic principles so why are your (and students) first instinct to ask for an example? Because physics, math and pedagogy are all abstract subjects that needs context. It's easy, populistic and egocentic, to bash on education, try understand the challenges instead. Eugene does provide one way to make the abstract concepts of physics contextual with his animations, but you need the examples, formulas, analogies and maths as well. The moving balls in a current could be really misleading to a lot of students, and doesn't show the electromagnetic field that's really in play. The animations are fine but a do not use this videos in my education because of the monotone voice over that tend to oversimplify to much. Hopefully Eugene will team up with an educator or become more educated himself to make better videos or inspire others to make 3d-animations to explain core concepts/basic principles. The chess analogy was WAY off, lost a lot of respect for this channel.
Thaweed, I never said that you do not need examples. In fact, at the end of the video I said, "The use of examples can help clarify the key principles..." In reply to your complaint about not showing the electromagnetic field for electric circuits, I have a very lengthy video on electromagnetism where I spend the entire video showing electric and magnetic fields. For the videos dealing with electric circuits, it is understood that these fields are present, and they do not need to be shown. This is not an "oversimplification." Also, I constantly get comments from many people about how much they love the voice on this channel. And I am not sure what you didn't like about the chess example. A lot of people have written comments that they liked the chess analogy.
@@Thaweed "according to Eugene, examples does not teach basic principles" No, but it does give context to how the physical principles work, which may or may not give clues on how the principle itself work, depending on the person learning. Like you said yourself, "physics, math and pedagogy are all abstract subjects that needs context", examples give context. "The moving balls in a current could be really misleading to a lot of students, and doesn't show the electromagnetic field that's really in play" That is true, but do we really need to explain the physics behind electromagnetic fields in shielded current examples/problems? I do agree however that explaining why cables are shielded to begin with should be good, but trying to explain how much effect it has on other cables in a regular circuit is just too much, as it has no practical use unless you work with it specifically. It is abstracted to begin with for a reason. Monotone voice usually makes things more focused, but that is just opinions so if you have a problem, you can (make someone) read closed captions with a non monotone voice and reupload :) Ironically, I would like you to give me an example on why the chess analogy is a bad analogy, cause now it is only an opinion which is useless in this context. I do agree that is a bit simplistic as any game would do, so it has nothing to do with chess itself, but it is a good clickbait cause I clicked on it and found about Eugene with this video.
I'm a HS physics teacher. I agree with a large part of this video, though not all of it. The problems with education vary from country to country, but if my understanding of the data is correct then physics education is pretty poor in many parts of the world. There are several common reasons I see for this: 1. Accountability. When students fail, teachers are held accountable. The vast majority of people holding teachers accountable, like principals, government officials,... aren't scientifically literate. At least in my experience. As a teacher, the only real defense you have against this is asking reproduction questions so at least the textbook has your back. Teachers should of course be accountable to some extent, but the system can (and often is) also at fault: when students enter HS with no basic math skills to speak of, physics becomes very hard to teach. 2. Being told how to teach by pedagogues / people with a degree in education. As much as I agree with the necessity of teaching basic concepts in a simple way so students have a foundation, this contradicts how "education experts" are telling me science should be taught. What's popular now is learning by discovery, where students should discover the physics themselves in real interdisciplinary STEM projects. This was again covered in the video as well: when subjects are introduced in very complex situations the core knowledge doesn't get through because it's obstructed by the rest of the project. The one point I disagree with in this video is the weight given to the many people who said they learned more in this video than in their entire education career. Just because people claim that doesn't make it true. I've had students tell me this, saying my explination was the greatest thing ever and they wished they'd gotten taught the concept like that earlier, only for me to point out them that I taught them that exact concept in the exact same way the year before. Or I've had students cry out "we were never taught that!" only for their classmates to say "whaddaya mean? We saw this last week...". It's easy to criticize education based on how people say it was. But people don't tend to recall all their classes accurately.
Thanks for your comments. I agree that teachers shouldn't be blamed for the poor performance of their students, as it could be just due the student's inadequate background in the subject. It can also be due to the education system that is imposed on the teachers, which the teachers have no control over. Regarding your last point, I only stated the types of comments that people have written on this channel. I made no claim as to whether or not their statements are actually true. Even if their statements are not true, the fact that they actually wrote these comments is empirically verifiable. Thanks.
I was thinking along the same lines as this while watching. Because this basic explanation part of the learning process is the fastest part, students often miss it by not showing up or will not be paying attention. Then the next week of practice doesn’t come easily because they never grasped the underlying concept when it was introduced on the first day. And once they’re lost, the next 10 weeks of building upon previous ideas only compounds the problem. It’s often not the case that university professors fail to give good explanations of underlying principles. However, when students miss these explanations or fail to take notes/review, it just doesn’t stick and the students are stuck struggling with weeks of practice on examples without the guiding principles that they could have learned at the beginning. While this isn’t always the fault of the students and it is the professor’s responsibility to gauge the level of understanding of the class as a whole and go back and review if necessary, there often isn’t enough time to cover everything thoroughly if the teacher constantly has to go back to basics because some students missed it the first time. At the end of the day, the fact is that high level physics and mathematics is not easy and if a student can’t or won’t put the time in to show up, pay attention, and review the principles outside of class then they simply aren’t going to understand everything that needs to be covered in a single 10 week class. Videos like Eugene’s are extremely valuable as a tool for students who (regardless of reason) don’t have a thorough understanding of the basic principles of the classes they’re working on. They are quick and simple enough for students to get that understanding on their own time and use it to catch up to whatever’s going on in their class. But I don’t like his assertion that good explanations are just completely skipped over in large universities because that wasn’t true in my own experience.
Science in middle school: talking about one-way mirror for two months. Emphasis on notebook neatness, decoration, and creativity. I was told it’s the most disliked subject by many.
Human memory and whatever the apparatus responsible for learning is faulty and it often takes several attempts approaching from different angles to understand something for real. At some point, all the pieces fall into place and it clicks. But trying to do too much will also overwhelm some students. I doubt there's a universal recipe or solution.
TakesTwoToTango I too taught high school physics. Generally speaking, my "on level" students who had passed algebra had no ability for basic two variable equations. It was seemingly hopeless. From the 80s we have rewritten the pedagogy but it hasn't helped. The essence of the problem is cultural. When we value and respect education, when students desire to become educated adults (instead of ignorant adults) then we will have a better education system.
You nailed it here Eugene! Love when you get into the philosophy. Learning the fundamentals is the most important for any subject. Fundamental principles apply across fields. These principles are the Lego pieces which come together to solve real engineering problems. I went to the top engineering university in the US and we definitely spent more time solving equations than analyzing first principles. Here’s hoping for another 10 years!
Thanks for the compliments. Yes, this seems to be a problem everywhere. When we spend the majority of our time solving the equations, this is not time spent learning the actual subject matter at hand, but just a matter of practicing our ability to solve equations.
nah, first principles aren't always that important for example, I'm fairly certain that a significant portion of pure maths professors wouldn't be able to recite the ZFC axioms by heart, even though these are the building blocks on which (almost all) modern mathematics is built (philosophically speaking you could argue that ZFC isn't actually what maths is built on, but I don't think that was what you're getting at) like even in chess it's not actually the best approach to explain all the rules from the start. once somebody is fairly sure how the pieces move it's much more beneficial for them to learn opening principles than the exact rules of draw by threefold repetition or by insufficient material (or even en passant for that matter)
Your dedication to this channel is still the same as I found 7 years ago. I actually learnt Thermodynamics, General Relativity perfectly only from your videos. Eternally grateful:-D
that was one thing I was lucky with. My engineering degree came from a University that pushed the basic laws. Now that I am nearing retirement I can look back and say that there too many times in my career when that basic knowledge allowed me to solve complex problems that stumped others. I have seen grads that dont have the basics and many more that are used to looking up "answers" on the Internet. I remember a class called general engineering where you could bring whatever you wanted to the exam, it didn't matter you either understood the science or you didn't, materials would not help.
Derek of Veritasium, who is normally very good at explaining things, has ignited a controversy with his video on how energy flows in a circuit. He is technically correct but his explanation left a lot to be desired and, actually, may have confused many people. Many electrical engineers had to make their own videos to properly explain and simplify the concept (plus correct a major units mistake). I am guessing that Eugene could really do a better job than Derek did.
Derek does it for the money, he doesn't understand our care much about what he teaches 🙄. I've never much liked his channel. You say it's only with the latest video this happened. Maybe consider that it's just that his latest video has a larger cohort of people qualified enough to see the problems. Actually most of his videos are the same.
Underrated Fact: Eugene is also a great chess player. Thanks for the Italian Game opening...As said, it was a game for white who sacrificed queen. Moves are: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 d6 (standard Italian Game) 4. Nc3 Bg4 (relatively pin knight on f3 threatening to capture queen on d1) 5. Nxe5 Bxd1 (white ignores the pin and sacrifices the queen) 6. Bf7+ Ke7 (white gives a support check by bishop and knight, king is forced to move on e7) 7. Nd5# (mate!).
Happy birthday to this beautiful Channel. Thanks for those ten years of relentless quality work. Much love to Eugene and everyone involved in this wonderful project.
Your videos have been a revelation and joy to watch since I first stumbled upon them only a few weeks ago. They have clarified many fundamental principles of Physics that I couldn't visualize, and consequently couldn't grasp. It is as if a blurry image has been brought into sharp focus. Thanks for sharing your way of seeing the Universe. 👍😎
That's why I love this channel. And a big thanks to Eugene for making these videos for over 10 years. I am also a physics student and I totally agree that after watching Eugene's videos many of my concepts have become clear.
Love and support from India❤️ This channel is an exceptional case for teaching Physics in what's actually happening behind the equations and other things. Thank you very much for existing on UA-cam.
I often find that independent learning of any subject is easier and more focused than anything that comes from a professor. Of course, you have to be disciplined and enjoy learning independently. They tend to be poor at explaining the fundamentals as well as analogies of how said fundamentals apply to objects. This is abysmal especially when it's £27,000 just for the teaching. Happy tenth anniversary! I hope there are many more to come.
They somehow lack the passion, I don't understand why they don't love the subject that they teach Edit: isn't 27k USD a bit much? I'm paying around 5k for my CSE in India.
@@kakalimukherjee3297 That certainly seems to be the case. It's very sad. The only real reason for attending university at present seems to be to gain the qualification and not for the lacklustre teaching. I love to see passionate teachers; they inspire and ignite the passion within me and other students, but they are getting harder to find.
Yes, exactly. And I think that's just how learning works. You'll always learn more by trying to figure things out yourself and think about the subject than have someone dump a ton of information on you in one hour lecture and expect you to understand it all immediately. I just don't know how everyone agreed that the second way is how everyone should learn.
Schooling focuses more on the computing of problems than on the essence and implications of the problem itself. By the way, thank you for your videos over the years. They’ve been a great aid to me, since I teach myself and rely a lot on public resources.
I fully agree with this chess analogy. I feel that nowadays, the educational systems base their teaching policies more on money rather than on the sincere and effective teaching. It's like manufacturing robots with certain prespecified commands. The robots that tend to violate this systematic instruction tend to be either real scientists or end up living their actual other passion....
You deserve to have much more subscribers..... I found this channel accidentally while searching for educational video for my highschool test, Man! you increased my interest in the subject a thousand times...today I'm pursuing engineering. Truly gems like you are underrated. Long way to go, keep inspiring younger ones
I understand where you are coming from. I also shared the exact same frustration all throughout my education, while being conscious of it. Alas, nothing can be done to change it. Only we as individuals can decide to learn or teach in the best way possible.
Thank you for your contributions. You saved many students countless hours of confusion and frustration and shown us the path to true understanding. Thanks Eugene!
This channel helped me immensely in getting a foothold to learn Quantum Mechanics, which I struggled with for months. Now, one year later, I understand QM as deeply and comprehensively as I do normal physics!! For satiating this curiosity I had, I am forever grateful to you!
A large part is partially or fully privatized schools gunning for "applied sciences" to quickly produce an exploitable workforce, instead of teaching the fundamentals first. It is also especially egregious with language schools, my own professional field. They spend an inordinate amount of time with speaking exercises instead of reading, listening and translation.
@@DennisDavisEdu That's the way it is. But in cursed places where the govt is given to imperialism and needs to produce soldiers and followers, like Britain or the USA, people don't seem to get much education at all.
As always Eugene and Kira, its been a pleasure. Thank you for 10 years of invaluable guides to physics and math. Not only were they life savors when i was at university but they also help reinvigorate my interest in physics when i am feeling burnt out
I remember watching these videos as a teenager. I always wanted to go into physics, and now I finally am this January. Thanks for allowing me to more easily explore this subject, Eugene (and Kira for voice acting)!
when I was at college I had the best grades on Calculus. Even though I never really understood what was actually happening and where this would even be applied in the first place
Yes, the mental pictures/animations are the key to understand math and physics. Formulas are just a tool to express the ideas, but to understand the ideas, one should have the image in the head, created by own imagination or presented by teacher. But most teachers assume just presenting formula is enough, they are either too lazy or too dumb.
The problem is that the teachers are explaining it the same way that they themselves were taught. In many cases, they don't know how to understand it any other way.
A lot of it is a legacy of the limits of traditional teaching technology. There are things you can't visually represent with chalk on a blackboard, so they just weren't visually represented. In many cases they still aren't even though they could be and it would help a lot if they were
I agree with everything you said in the video. I am 15, in high school,when I look back in my life, I feel I have studied a very small portion of mathematics The whole Mathematics I studied till date can actually be taught in a much shorter time, instead we should have studied a lot more than it. I wish if someone exposed me to more Mathematics when I was a kid. But past is unchangeable, what I have is my present. And hence now I expose myself to more Mathematics as I can via books. There is a website Z Library. You can download books for free from that site. I studied Graoh theory last month, I really fell in love with it And it's actually simple, graph theory should be taught to kids of grade 6-8 or maybe even lower, because it requires actually nothing special But yes the problems in olympiads on graph theory really require many things(which can be devoloped) I am watching your channel from last 8 months. Thank you and your team for providing this high quality content
Thank you so much for providing one of the most valuable and thougt organizing channel ever🙏 making my journey to revisit physics engaging like it's never been before.
I honestly like Eugene's videos very much and recommend them to my students, however, I have to also point out the other side as a university teacher. I have used simulations and animations as a means for teaching even before I found Eugene's channel. The problem I encounter is that many of the students actually are not prepared to go the extra step to even try to understand the principles (I am teaching measurement technology, electronics, renewable energies and programming). They are of the strong believe that they only need to train solving many exercises in order to pass the exam - and it might be enough in many other courses. But then they encounter a new, unexpected question on my exams and they fail. A couple of years ago students would pass by during the course and ask questions outside of the scheduled classroom hours, but this has - even before Corona and remote teaching - dropped out of fashion, especially during the 5 years or so.
So teachers teach this way because that’s how they where taught . Students learn this way because they never learnt to actually think. Becomes tricky too change the system for any individual. At least there is the internet for those curious enough!
I completely agree with everything explained here! The time I've spent watching your videos was far more valuable than the time I spent in my math and physics classes. For example, when I first learned about capacitors, my teacher used a jar of marshmallows as an analogy (e.g., bigger jars can hold more marshmallows). However, it made me think the charged particles were stored _between_ the capacitor's plates instead of _on_ the plates due to the schematic symbol. The analogy thus gave me the incorrect mental model and primarily confused me when I was studying RC (resistor-capacitor) circuits, even when presented with the equations behind them. A couple of years later, when I came across your video on capacitors and capacitance, I got a clearer picture and immediately understood the concept better. This accelerated my learning experience and filled in many gaps in my knowledge! All in all, I'm deeply grateful to have found your channel so I can firmly grasp even the most difficult topics (like quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, and calculus). Keep up the outstanding work for years to come! 😊
The first step in learning physics is to know relationship between formulas. For example what is force in newtons? It is kg * m / s² (aka force of fallen brick that has broken glass) Many of my friends just grind formulas without knowing relationship with reality. And it isn't effective way to learn physics
This channel, “But Why” and “Branch Education” are hands down the best 3D rendered educational channels. I have learned more concepts in hours here than in years of school/university.
To be frank, based on my experience as a third-year undergraduate student, you can know all the theory in the world and still not be able to solve any problem. You still need *both* the understanding of the rules and a decent amount of practice to fully grasp their practical application. I learned this the hard way through many failed exams. Using this video's analogy, you need to *play* chess to strengthen your understanding of those rules. I perfectly know all the basic rules of chess, yet I am still terrible at it to this day. Why? First, because I don't like this game, but more importantly, because I barely practiced it all these years. -Therefore, as much as I like your educational videos, I disagree with this opinion piece. Colleges are doing fine. It's the students who need to do better by not relying too heavily on outside teachers, professors, or even internet educators.- -Every person understands the world through their paradigms. Since paradigms can only be changed from the inside, the best teacher for any subject that is important to the person is that person themselves. Any outside teacher is simply a source of inspiration for students to change themselves. It is ultimately up to the student to decide whether they increase their knowledge or not.- -To clarify, an outside teacher is a -*-person-*- , not the material of the subject, such as the books, the videos, the diagrams or the pictures.-
I strongly agree that students need both theory *and* practice to understand a subject be able to apply it. But I disagree completely with the second half of your comment. You seem to be saying that students should "not rely" on educators other than the professor provided by the university. Why? As another commenter on this video pointed out, many university professors tend to be subpar teachers due to their focus on research and lack of time to dedicate to pedagogy. If my professor sucks, I can't rely on them to teach me the course material, so my time is better spend watching a video on the subject or reading the textbook. I have a personal example from this very quarter: the university administration screwed my physical chemistry professor by assigning him to a lecture hall without a chalkboard or whiteboard, so it's very difficult for him to give cogent lectures. So, classes typically end up amounting to a general overview of the topic, lacking any deep exploration of the theory, or any specific computational examples that could be of help on homework or exams. So, after a weak performance on the first exam, I started reading a quantum chemistry textbook (different from and superior to the assigned textbook) thoroughly and watching online lectures from various educators. The result? I scored 100% on the second exam while attending the lectures over Zoom, half asleep. High exam scores are typical for me. I was already a very good student; the outside resources did not "inspire" me to become a better student, they just taught me what I needed to know, when the university was failing to do so.
@@nataliearcadia Thank you. In the second part of my argument, I actually meant that self-study is better than any professor's teachings. I didn't mean that students should rely on the professor provided by their university; in fact, I meant the opposite. Therefore, we actually agree here. 😄
I am not saying that practice is not important. In the very beginning of the video, the second sentence was "It takes many years of practice to become good at playing chess." My point was that if you are never told the rules of chess, then no amount of practice will ever make you good at it.
I have tried to convey these thoughts as a high school student to my teachers and all I got were bad marks for 'destructive behaviour'. Also, many students don't see the necessity of differentiating between laws and rules because they just want to get a good mark and be rewarded by some stranger they will never see again afterwards. The system is broken - we educate superficially thinking people, that are not trained in thinking independently. We are conditioning our next generations like animals.
If you have ever watched Prof. Pavel Grinfeld's lectures on tensor calculus or read his book on the subject, you might have noticed that the second chapter (and corresponding lecture) is titled "The Rules of the Game." This is one of the reasons why Prof. Grinfeld's lectures on the subject are among the best; he explains the simple rules before deriving anything else - much like a good chess teacher explaining the rules of chess before strategy.
Feynman's chess analogy was different. He said that what physicists are trying to do is analogous to trying to figure out the rules of chess just by watching chess games being played.
Eugene, Thank you. I have always had physics teachers that taught in the "academic" way, without really explaining what was really happening. That except one year with an amazing teacher, who used simple practical examples and made me understand that I loved the subject. But I never could really understand things, and as I tend to learn things only if I understand how they work, I have always had low grades. I have recently found your channel, and it is exactly what I wished for!
When my class was taught the quadratic formula we weren't taught how it was derived. So I looked it up (pre-internet). When midterms came around, I didn't remember the quadratic formula anymore, but I knew how to derive it, and passed the test.
I like how you bring up the reality of arbitrary social conventions. I see so many poorly educated field workers try to compete with other higher educated people who do not work in their field but still understands the constructs of the work. One example would be an electrician arguing with an electronics engineer that a relay is in fact called a contactor because some smartass thought it was better to create a different name for the same thing. Said electrician would then go on and claim authority and superiority simply for using said made up arbitrary convention that an institute previously had made into an intellectual autoritative token when in fact we all know that an electronics engineer could do the work of an electrician but not necessarily the other way around. That might be a poor example, but every once in awhile we all stumble upon someone who hasn't actually learned anything other than simple bullshit terminology, and tries to use that as a means to show authority.
I don't know what a contactor is, but I absolutely get what you're saying and I very much agree this is a phenomenon. There are many who claim authority because they know ultimately meaningless conventions, they don't even realise how little they actually know, and what it means to truly understand something. Sad but also destructive.
Yup. It's the difference between understanding the fundamental problem/system/interaction/whatever talked about, vs. the names for its parts, which are really just handles for the mind to manipulate the parts of the problem. Of course it's easier if the names are consistent, but for someone who understands the real problem, inconsistent names are an annoyance. Someone who doesn't understand the problem, falsely thinks they understand it if they know the names. Now if they encounter someone who uses a different name, their shallow understanding hits a wall like your electrician guy. Someone who knows what they're talking about, sees past that to the actual mechanism.
I am a second year Physics major. Prior to college I was able to derive my own equations and solutions to problems since the courses I was taking spanned an entire year rather than a single semester. Now however, extremely complex topics that require lots of thought to understand are squeezed into the span of a single semester and I find it increasingly difficult to actually learn things. I hate memorizing, I want to LEARN! I want to UNDERSTAND! I want to think FREELY and not be bound by looming deadlines! I am a STUDENT not a word document. I strive to delve further into academia, yet it is modern academia itself which is pushing me away.
I'd love to see video explaining Veritasium's recent " The Big Misconception About Electricity" explained in your style. Regardless, I'm very grateful for this channel and appreciate all the work that goes into it. Thank you very much for these amazing videos. Also thank you Kira Vincent for an amazing job narrating these videos.
Amazing. I've always resonated with the idea of first principles thinking. University always seems to focus on procedures rather than fundamental concepts and as someone who'd rather spend time understanding principles, university felt worthless. I feel this is something important that isn't talked about a lot.
I'm coming back to this video, after some time. These videos have done a fantastic job of helping me understand the subject matter, but I am also now thinking back to my high-school days, and realizing, that I had a few very good teachers. What I learned in those classes, I took for granted, or even had a distaste for, at the time. But, as an adult, I am looking back, with a considerable amount of gratitude for those talented people, who cared enough for, and had the understanding, to be able to convey these ideas to a young teenager. Those brilliant, and clever teachers, were rare, but I was lucky enough to have had more than one, as a growing boy. Thank you teachers!
"The actual key principles are lost, and people instead end up focusing on the procedures and strategies for solving the specific examples they're exposed to." This is what frustrated me when I was a physics undergraduate student. All of the problems in early physics classes weren't about learning actual principles, so much as they were about memorizing the "trick" you're supposed to use to solve the problem. No explanation for any of the assumptions you make, why you can make certain choices, etc. You just make them because it's what the professor did, and -- most of the time -- it gives you the right answer. Early physics classes were like listening to someone tell the punchline of a joke, and you having to infer what they must have said before to reach that punchline, while later physics classes would actually go back a few steps and describe the rest of the joke before the punchline that was missing before. It's better, but you still might not "get" the joke. Videos like these, though, are like someone filling you in on context of the joke and what makes it humorous.
Hey, I love you. Thank you so much for your art Eugene. In human history (or at least the western history that I'm aware of) there is a lot of record of texts being mostly transcribed into pictures to be able to help those held in systems without the opportunity to written language and those pictures are to this day understood as sacred. The videos you make are one of the most current analogues and a seemingly noble one at that. The topic of the video touches on another great importance of your art being even reaching out to teachers is a tricky task because of the dialectic issue, the student a teacher having different expectations on what it means to teach or learn "x". To the degree that I am taught I am self taught studying topics and minds while living a nomadic lifestyle and these videos are the type of thing that make me stop and realize that are are quality sources to learn from and work with. Thank you, -Alex
Thanks for the compliments and for the kind words.
2 роки тому+1
Congrats and thanks for all you've done! Also special thanks for the story about the government official - made me laugh. I agree with the video completely.
Sir Eugene. You have presented not an opinion. But the truth. I owe you so much intuition. I always choose derivation and having fun with solving problems. I'm always one of the best wherever I go in the field. It's largely part because of your videos that I watch since I was a highschooler. You shaped my mind. You fed my curiosity. You grew my potential. You are very appreciated, Mr. Eugene. Great philosophical video.
really your videos are great, extremely great. by time this channel will be the biggest channel on youtube and it really deserves. thanks for helping us.
Thanks for the compliments. You will never hear my voice on this channel, but there is a video of me that appears on my animal rights website and on my Facebook page. The links are available from my UA-cam home page.
When i was a kid and when i wanted to play chess with him, my dad was like: "Oh, you'll learn by playing." I constantly asked him: "Can i do this? Can i Do that?"
Lol people often say 'you'll learn by playing' or 'you'll learn by doing' because that's the best they ever got 🤷. It's not the best way to learn. Asking questions is. He just doesn't want to answer questions.
You have done, is doing and will do not only a favor for people that don't understand something, but in some way create the very base of understanding the subject in their minds, which it can create, by itself, creativity and excitement. I want to thank you so much for that. You did create, you are creating and you will create new engineers, scientists, physicists that will likely change a bit of the world. You are amazing.
You are undoubtedly a genius. I can see that clearly. Thank you very much for all of your efforts; I really appreciate it with all my heart! Thank you...
I usually don't comment, but I have to. Thank you Eugene, for these videos and animation. I love seeing the same subject explained in many ways. Each different way I get explained the same subject I gain new insight on that topic and a new way of presenting it to others in a way, maybe they will find easy to understand. So many people have different ways to seeing things it's interesting how maybe the "standard" way of learning is obviously not fit for all cases. Thanks for 10yrs and cheers for many more.
I appreciate your videos, Eugene. I'm sure you've helped many. I was fortunate to have halfway decent teachers and to often be able to figure out the underlying principles from a series of examples. But I was always frustrated and saw other students give up. Many students get into a trap of taking copious notes-- and not the good kind of notes. Just copying whatever the teacher said.
Thanks. By the way, I don't even see why note taking should be necessary. The teacher should just provide a copy of the lecture notes to everyone. The issue is that the concept of the university lecture was created before the printing press was invented, and the universities have yet to catch up to this technological innovation.
I’ve never been so intrigued and astonished by the simplicity in which Eugene provides difficult ideas into simple and graphical interpretations which such ease. Cheers for many years more years and long life to this channel.
I very much agree! Deep understanding of the underlying principles and the structure of each theory is The most important thing, especially in physics. Also, in my opinion, it's very important to leave no gaps in this understanding ( or , at least, as few as possible). Most of the common misconceptions have their origin in these gaps.
![АЛАУДИНОВ у Скабеевой: эти их ВСУ нас НЕ ДОГОНЯТ 😁 [Пародия]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/an0anqU4WGQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I noticed a similar thing in math. When I went to university, they taught us all the fundamental rules to how math operates and everything in high school math made a LOT more sense. The rules aren’t that hard to grasp, some could even be understood by elementary schoolers, yet they are restricted to advanced mathematics courses in university, long after most people have decided they hate math
Very true unfortunately.
Exactly
That’s because most high school math teachers don’t really understand university level math such as calculus. The education system treats students as products on assembly line, assuming if the teacher capable of solving high school math problems then he/she can teach high school math. But the fundamental concepts and methods of calculus should be and can be planted to students’ mind as early as junior school. Math teacher who can appreciate the beauty of calculus, would try to introduce the taste to kids as early as possible. But if him/her self does not know the taste, he can’t tell others about it.
Exactly. A few months ago my little sister had trouble understanding where the formula for calculating the area of a triangle comes from. It was only when I showed her by cutting a piece of paper, that you can double a triangle to a paralellogram and then cut that and arrange it into a rectangle that it made sense to her. It's really frustrating that schools force studens to learn unintuitive formulas, instead of just using such visual proofs which can be done in mere minutes.
@@rismosch in that way, the ancient Greek methods make a lot of sense. All proofs were geometric and never relied on measurement or numbers. They have their limits, but can be far easier for children to understand for basic proofs.
That’s another thing missing from pre university math: proofs. Mathematics is a system of logic but it’s treated like a bunch of formulas to memorize. People get upset about “show your work” because its just added on to finding the answer. I only knew why the quadratic formula worked because my math teacher had a poster of the proof on her wall, but in college math we mathematically derived all the theorems we used in class, in class!
“It has now been ten years” and I raise my glass for many many more, I wholeheartedly love this channel.
Thank you very much.
@@EugeneKhutoryansky Thank you sir for your fantastic video series that have been produced over the years.
Thanks.
@@EugeneKhutoryansky we need face reveal!!!
@@pranavsai5761 Face reveal is when things go to shit. Please no.
"Can't we just repeal Kirchhoff's Law?" is the most "high ranking government official" thing I've heard all day 🤣
Prof. Lewin has repealed Kirchhoff's Law, though not everybody agrees with his decision.
This government official had a lot of power and responsibility.
@@EugeneKhutoryansky
Formal education beyond 6th grade or an IQ above room temperature may prove detrimental to getting into such a position.
@@chrimony it's called faraday's law
I think a certain government official in the USA, that thought we could change Earths orbit to cure climate change, is right up there.
I struggle with the principles of electronics, and these animations have helped immensely. Of course, Kira's superb narration deserves credit as well!
Thanks.
Agreed.
Remember while a useful interpretation they are still models and not an exact representation as most things in the universe doesn't have a visible image. We experiment, measure, and analyze the data then we take that and compile it into terms we can understand, like visual representation and models.
@@EugeneKhutoryanskyhello Eugene, are you Woman?
@@dororo2597 Eugene is not woman. the narrator is someone else, women named kira as op said.
This is exactly how I learned my high school chemistry and other stem subjects. Besides learning all the principles and examples the textbook and my teacher talked about, I'm always curious to find the fundamental principles behind each instance, such as the interactions between different parts of a molecule. I'm glad that I realized this early in my academic career, and thank you Eugene for sharing this most significant and original idea that everyone should pursue when learning a stem subject.
Thanks.
I see myself as lucky enough that I found your channel in my exploration journey of physics here on UA-cam!
Thanks a lot for making such videos for us!🥰🖤
Thanks.
@@EugeneKhutoryansky Woah! You replied to my comment!🤩
I agree. As a technical trainer in the automotive trade and a student of mechanical engineering, your videos have helped me immensely, and in turn helped me better teach others using fundamental laws rather than the textbook approach.
Thanks. I am glad my videos have been helpful.
Being able to form a mental picture of something abstract is very difficult for most people, and it's not even limited to just physics. Reading a book that describes what a character looks like can result in each person forming a vastly different view of what the character actually looks like, but being able to see a picture of the character eliminates that difference.
The way physics is taught, you're told the mathematics first and then expected to pick up the mental picture later on. Because the mental picture is the hard part, students don't usually pick it up and only ever pick up the rules of the math involved. This is exactly backwards from how you should learn. Your understanding from "seeing" what's going on should come first and the math follow naturally from that. Starting from the math and trying to "work backwards" to what's actually happening is what students seem to struggle with, which is perfectly reasonable, considering it's backwards from how mathematics and physics were developed in the first place.
Thanks.
True. I struggled and never consciously ever pictured the problems. Instead just solve the problem on paper based on my memorized formulas and practiced examples
Is this why Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge?
This! You nailed the point!
Mathematical language is basically a spectrum of extremely precise and rigorous words, put on very abstract, subtle and deep motifs/patterns
Making students learn these mathematical words by heart and manipulate them but without having ever observed the abstract motifs: it is just pure nonsense, which takes no consideration about how mathematics are constructed&developed / where they come from.
It is thus absurd, and has nothing mathematical. And will obviously accomplish nothing except disgusting many poor souls from mathematics.
But sadly it is the most common approach.. (if you have really good teachers it can compensate and turn out nicely, but otherwise..)
Anyway, you really nailed the point. Really great and refreshing to see people finally pointing this out!
From concepts to equations, from intuition to formulas
You're a truly great teacher Eugene. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. Also, shout out to Kira for her masterful narration. You two are a brilliant team!
Thanks for the compliments.
@@EugeneKhutoryansky love and respect your valiant brilliance.
Thanks.
Finally, a video of yours to send to my professors without them calling me a smartass
This video said it all how I always expected to be taught in my schools. It always makes me sad when I can solve a lot of problems without understanding and feeling those problems intuitively. I am your one of the oldest subscribers and I am thankful for your contribution on that. Faith restored. Also, I think the trend's been changing and others UA-camrs are also trying their best on this.
Thanks.
One of the reasons why physics (or maths) is not taught in the most effective way possible might have something to do with how universities / colleges work: for one, teaching is usually not a priority compared with research in top unis. Professors don't have enough time to prepare better teaching materials, and they usually end up reusing past teaching materials instead. After all, teaching *is* difficult: the incredible animations that you made took a LONG time, and that's not even counting the time it takes to come up with the intuition in the first place!
Thanks for the compliments about my animations. I think a large part of the problem is that many professors only know how to teach the same way that they themselves were taught. That is, they often don't even realize that any other method is possible.
@@EugeneKhutoryansky Has the American Modeling Teachers Association changed that at all in the last decade?
I love the idea of this but as a teacher I have to say it is difficult to teach the basic principles well. These videos are very good thanks for them, I used them regularly.
Thanks.
Could you elaborate on what makes it difficult to teach the basic principles? With an example or two?
@@wizard7314 You're question is rather telling, according to Eugene examples does not teach basic principles so why are your (and students) first instinct to ask for an example? Because physics, math and pedagogy are all abstract subjects that needs context. It's easy, populistic and egocentic, to bash on education, try understand the challenges instead. Eugene does provide one way to make the abstract concepts of physics contextual with his animations, but you need the examples, formulas, analogies and maths as well. The moving balls in a current could be really misleading to a lot of students, and doesn't show the electromagnetic field that's really in play. The animations are fine but a do not use this videos in my education because of the monotone voice over that tend to oversimplify to much. Hopefully Eugene will team up with an educator or become more educated himself to make better videos or inspire others to make 3d-animations to explain core concepts/basic principles. The chess analogy was WAY off, lost a lot of respect for this channel.
Thaweed, I never said that you do not need examples. In fact, at the end of the video I said, "The use of examples can help clarify the key principles..." In reply to your complaint about not showing the electromagnetic field for electric circuits, I have a very lengthy video on electromagnetism where I spend the entire video showing electric and magnetic fields. For the videos dealing with electric circuits, it is understood that these fields are present, and they do not need to be shown. This is not an "oversimplification." Also, I constantly get comments from many people about how much they love the voice on this channel. And I am not sure what you didn't like about the chess example. A lot of people have written comments that they liked the chess analogy.
@@Thaweed "according to Eugene, examples does not teach basic principles"
No, but it does give context to how the physical principles work, which may or may not give clues on how the principle itself work, depending on the person learning.
Like you said yourself, "physics, math and pedagogy are all abstract subjects that needs context", examples give context.
"The moving balls in a current could be really misleading to a lot of students, and doesn't show the electromagnetic field that's really in play"
That is true, but do we really need to explain the physics behind electromagnetic fields in shielded current examples/problems? I do agree however that explaining why cables are shielded to begin with should be good, but trying to explain how much effect it has on other cables in a regular circuit is just too much, as it has no practical use unless you work with it specifically. It is abstracted to begin with for a reason.
Monotone voice usually makes things more focused, but that is just opinions so if you have a problem, you can (make someone) read closed captions with a non monotone voice and reupload :)
Ironically, I would like you to give me an example on why the chess analogy is a bad analogy, cause now it is only an opinion which is useless in this context. I do agree that is a bit simplistic as any game would do, so it has nothing to do with chess itself, but it is a good clickbait cause I clicked on it and found about Eugene with this video.
I'm a HS physics teacher. I agree with a large part of this video, though not all of it.
The problems with education vary from country to country, but if my understanding of the data is correct then physics education is pretty poor in many parts of the world. There are several common reasons I see for this:
1. Accountability. When students fail, teachers are held accountable. The vast majority of people holding teachers accountable, like principals, government officials,... aren't scientifically literate. At least in my experience. As a teacher, the only real defense you have against this is asking reproduction questions so at least the textbook has your back. Teachers should of course be accountable to some extent, but the system can (and often is) also at fault: when students enter HS with no basic math skills to speak of, physics becomes very hard to teach.
2. Being told how to teach by pedagogues / people with a degree in education. As much as I agree with the necessity of teaching basic concepts in a simple way so students have a foundation, this contradicts how "education experts" are telling me science should be taught. What's popular now is learning by discovery, where students should discover the physics themselves in real interdisciplinary STEM projects. This was again covered in the video as well: when subjects are introduced in very complex situations the core knowledge doesn't get through because it's obstructed by the rest of the project.
The one point I disagree with in this video is the weight given to the many people who said they learned more in this video than in their entire education career. Just because people claim that doesn't make it true. I've had students tell me this, saying my explination was the greatest thing ever and they wished they'd gotten taught the concept like that earlier, only for me to point out them that I taught them that exact concept in the exact same way the year before. Or I've had students cry out "we were never taught that!" only for their classmates to say "whaddaya mean? We saw this last week...".
It's easy to criticize education based on how people say it was. But people don't tend to recall all their classes accurately.
Thanks for your comments. I agree that teachers shouldn't be blamed for the poor performance of their students, as it could be just due the student's inadequate background in the subject. It can also be due to the education system that is imposed on the teachers, which the teachers have no control over. Regarding your last point, I only stated the types of comments that people have written on this channel. I made no claim as to whether or not their statements are actually true. Even if their statements are not true, the fact that they actually wrote these comments is empirically verifiable. Thanks.
I was thinking along the same lines as this while watching. Because this basic explanation part of the learning process is the fastest part, students often miss it by not showing up or will not be paying attention. Then the next week of practice doesn’t come easily because they never grasped the underlying concept when it was introduced on the first day. And once they’re lost, the next 10 weeks of building upon previous ideas only compounds the problem.
It’s often not the case that university professors fail to give good explanations of underlying principles. However, when students miss these explanations or fail to take notes/review, it just doesn’t stick and the students are stuck struggling with weeks of practice on examples without the guiding principles that they could have learned at the beginning.
While this isn’t always the fault of the students and it is the professor’s responsibility to gauge the level of understanding of the class as a whole and go back and review if necessary, there often isn’t enough time to cover everything thoroughly if the teacher constantly has to go back to basics because some students missed it the first time. At the end of the day, the fact is that high level physics and mathematics is not easy and if a student can’t or won’t put the time in to show up, pay attention, and review the principles outside of class then they simply aren’t going to understand everything that needs to be covered in a single 10 week class.
Videos like Eugene’s are extremely valuable as a tool for students who (regardless of reason) don’t have a thorough understanding of the basic principles of the classes they’re working on. They are quick and simple enough for students to get that understanding on their own time and use it to catch up to whatever’s going on in their class. But I don’t like his assertion that good explanations are just completely skipped over in large universities because that wasn’t true in my own experience.
Science in middle school: talking about one-way mirror for two months. Emphasis on notebook neatness, decoration, and creativity. I was told it’s the most disliked subject by many.
Human memory and whatever the apparatus responsible for learning is faulty and it often takes several attempts approaching from different angles to understand something for real. At some point, all the pieces fall into place and it clicks. But trying to do too much will also overwhelm some students. I doubt there's a universal recipe or solution.
TakesTwoToTango I too taught high school physics. Generally speaking, my "on level" students who had passed algebra had no ability for basic two variable equations. It was seemingly hopeless. From the 80s we have rewritten the pedagogy but it hasn't helped. The essence of the problem is cultural. When we value and respect education, when students desire to become educated adults (instead of ignorant adults) then we will have a better education system.
You nailed it here Eugene! Love when you get into the philosophy. Learning the fundamentals is the most important for any subject. Fundamental principles apply across fields. These principles are the Lego pieces which come together to solve real engineering problems. I went to the top engineering university in the US and we definitely spent more time solving equations than analyzing first principles. Here’s hoping for another 10 years!
Thanks for the compliments. Yes, this seems to be a problem everywhere. When we spend the majority of our time solving the equations, this is not time spent learning the actual subject matter at hand, but just a matter of practicing our ability to solve equations.
nah, first principles aren't always that important
for example, I'm fairly certain that a significant portion of pure maths professors wouldn't be able to recite the ZFC axioms by heart, even though these are the building blocks on which (almost all) modern mathematics is built (philosophically speaking you could argue that ZFC isn't actually what maths is built on, but I don't think that was what you're getting at)
like even in chess it's not actually the best approach to explain all the rules from the start. once somebody is fairly sure how the pieces move it's much more beneficial for them to learn opening principles than the exact rules of draw by threefold repetition or by insufficient material (or even en passant for that matter)
Your dedication to this channel is still the same as I found 7 years ago. I actually learnt Thermodynamics, General Relativity perfectly only from your videos.
Eternally grateful:-D
Thanks. I am glad my videos have been helpful.
that was one thing I was lucky with. My engineering degree came from a University that pushed the basic laws. Now that I am nearing retirement I can look back and say that there too many times in my career when that basic knowledge allowed me to solve complex problems that stumped others. I have seen grads that dont have the basics and many more that are used to looking up "answers" on the Internet. I remember a class called general engineering where you could bring whatever you wanted to the exam, it didn't matter you either understood the science or you didn't, materials would not help.
Derek of Veritasium, who is normally very good at explaining things, has ignited a controversy with his video on how energy flows in a circuit. He is technically correct but his explanation left a lot to be desired and, actually, may have confused many people. Many electrical engineers had to make their own videos to properly explain and simplify the concept (plus correct a major units mistake). I am guessing that Eugene could really do a better job than Derek did.
Yeah actually it contradicts Eugene’s explanation
Derek does it for the money, he doesn't understand our care much about what he teaches 🙄. I've never much liked his channel. You say it's only with the latest video this happened. Maybe consider that it's just that his latest video has a larger cohort of people qualified enough to see the problems. Actually most of his videos are the same.
Electroboom did it
Underrated Fact: Eugene is also a great chess player. Thanks for the Italian Game opening...As said, it was a game for white who sacrificed queen. Moves are:
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 d6 (standard Italian Game) 4. Nc3 Bg4 (relatively pin knight on f3 threatening to capture queen on d1) 5. Nxe5 Bxd1 (white ignores the pin and sacrifices the queen) 6. Bf7+ Ke7 (white gives a support check by bishop and knight, king is forced to move on e7) 7. Nd5# (mate!).
Happy birthday to this beautiful Channel. Thanks for those ten years of relentless quality work. Much love to Eugene and everyone involved in this wonderful project.
Thank you very much for the compliments.
Your videos have been a revelation and joy to watch since I first stumbled upon them only a few weeks ago. They have clarified many fundamental principles of Physics that I couldn't visualize, and consequently couldn't grasp. It is as if a blurry image has been brought into sharp focus. Thanks for sharing your way of seeing the Universe. 👍😎
Thanks for the compliments. I am glad my videos have been helpful.
That's why I love this channel. And a big thanks to Eugene for making these videos for over 10 years. I am also a physics student and I totally agree that after watching Eugene's videos many of my concepts have become clear.
Thank you.
Love and support from India❤️ This channel is an exceptional case for teaching Physics in what's actually happening behind the equations and other things. Thank you very much for existing on UA-cam.
Thanks for the compliments about my videos.
I often find that independent learning of any subject is easier and more focused than anything that comes from a professor. Of course, you have to be disciplined and enjoy learning independently. They tend to be poor at explaining the fundamentals as well as analogies of how said fundamentals apply to objects. This is abysmal especially when it's £27,000 just for the teaching. Happy tenth anniversary! I hope there are many more to come.
They somehow lack the passion, I don't understand why they don't love the subject that they teach
Edit: isn't 27k USD a bit much? I'm paying around 5k for my CSE in India.
Thanks!
@@kakalimukherjee3297 That certainly seems to be the case. It's very sad. The only real reason for attending university at present seems to be to gain the qualification and not for the lacklustre teaching. I love to see passionate teachers; they inspire and ignite the passion within me and other students, but they are getting harder to find.
@@kakalimukherjee3297 It's £27,000 for 3 years of student fees in the UK. Quite extortionate.
Yes, exactly. And I think that's just how learning works. You'll always learn more by trying to figure things out yourself and think about the subject than have someone dump a ton of information on you in one hour lecture and expect you to understand it all immediately. I just don't know how everyone agreed that the second way is how everyone should learn.
Schooling focuses more on the computing of problems than on the essence and implications of the problem itself. By the way, thank you for your videos over the years. They’ve been a great aid to me, since I teach myself and rely a lot on public resources.
Thanks. I am glad my videos have been helpful.
We should teach physics the way it used to be taught: throwing apples at the heads of students until they understand it all
Throw some metal apples to make the students more open-minded
03:45 Irony is Eugene is probably only about 12 years old! 🤣 Congrats on the anniversary and thanks for the videos!
"oh no my queen!"
I fully agree with this chess analogy. I feel that nowadays, the educational systems base their teaching policies more on money rather than on the sincere and effective teaching. It's like manufacturing robots with certain prespecified commands. The robots that tend to violate this systematic instruction tend to be either real scientists or end up living their actual other passion....
You deserve to have much more subscribers..... I found this channel accidentally while searching for educational video for my highschool test, Man! you increased my interest in the subject a thousand times...today I'm pursuing engineering. Truly gems like you are underrated. Long way to go, keep inspiring younger ones
Thanks for the compliment. I am glad my videos have increased your interest in these subjects.
That move at the end where it looks like the king is in mate is a nice touch.
Well done Eugene
I understand where you are coming from. I also shared the exact same frustration all throughout my education, while being conscious of it. Alas, nothing can be done to change it. Only we as individuals can decide to learn or teach in the best way possible.
Thank you for your contributions. You saved many students countless hours of confusion and frustration and shown us the path to true understanding. Thanks Eugene!
Thanks for the compliments.
Confusion and frustration mannn
😶
This channel helped me immensely in getting a foothold to learn Quantum Mechanics, which I struggled with for months. Now, one year later, I understand QM as deeply and comprehensively as I do normal physics!! For satiating this curiosity I had, I am forever grateful to you!
Thanks. I am glad my Quantum Mechanics videos have been helpful.
I like that youre still making this videos. And this channel is still underrated.
Thanks.
what an effort, love your channel just keep doing the good
Thanks!
A large part is partially or fully privatized schools gunning for "applied sciences" to quickly produce an exploitable workforce, instead of teaching the fundamentals first. It is also especially egregious with language schools, my own professional field. They spend an inordinate amount of time with speaking exercises instead of reading, listening and translation.
Why do you single out privatization?
@@DennisDavisEdu That's the way it is. But in cursed places where the govt is given to imperialism and needs to produce soldiers and followers, like Britain or the USA, people don't seem to get much education at all.
As always Eugene and Kira, its been a pleasure. Thank you for 10 years of invaluable guides to physics and math. Not only were they life savors when i was at university but they also help reinvigorate my interest in physics when i am feeling burnt out
Thanks. I am glad to hear that my videos are helpful and interesting.
"Can't we just repeal it?" is one heck of a line lmfao
Gonna repeal gravity because I wanna fly
I want to repeal the 2nd law of thermodynamics so I can be young again
I remember watching these videos as a teenager. I always wanted to go into physics, and now I finally am this January. Thanks for allowing me to more easily explore this subject, Eugene (and Kira for voice acting)!
Thanks!!!
I was thinking the same in my whole years of studying. But I couldn't explain what was wrong with the way of teaching. This video is gold.
Thanks.
when I was at college I had the best grades on Calculus. Even though I never really understood what was actually happening and where this would even be applied in the first place
Congrats on the 10 year anniversary! I will be staying with this channel for many years to come!
Thanks.
One of the best Educational channels on youtube. Thank you Eugene, for putting in so much effort into each and every one of your videos!
Thanks.
Yes, the mental pictures/animations are the key to understand math and physics. Formulas are just a tool to express the ideas, but to understand the ideas, one should have the image in the head, created by own imagination or presented by teacher. But most teachers assume just presenting formula is enough, they are either too lazy or too dumb.
The problem is that the teachers are explaining it the same way that they themselves were taught. In many cases, they don't know how to understand it any other way.
There are people who are incapable of picturing images in their minds. Their brains don't have the same wiring to the visual cortex.
A lot of it is a legacy of the limits of traditional teaching technology. There are things you can't visually represent with chalk on a blackboard, so they just weren't visually represented. In many cases they still aren't even though they could be and it would help a lot if they were
I agree with everything you said in the video.
I am 15, in high school,when I look back in my life, I feel I have studied a very small portion of mathematics
The whole Mathematics I studied till date can actually be taught in a much shorter time, instead we should have studied a lot more than it. I wish if someone exposed me to more Mathematics when I was a kid. But past is unchangeable, what I have is my present. And hence now I expose myself to more Mathematics as I can via books. There is a website Z Library. You can download books for free from that site.
I studied Graoh theory last month, I really fell in love with it
And it's actually simple, graph theory should be taught to kids of grade 6-8 or maybe even lower, because it requires actually nothing special
But yes the problems in olympiads on graph theory really require many things(which can be devoloped)
I am watching your channel from last 8 months.
Thank you and your team for providing this high quality content
Thanks.
Can you share some more resources to learn from?
I am also 16 and I feel the same man
Thank you so much for providing one of the most valuable and thougt organizing channel ever🙏 making my journey to revisit physics engaging like it's never been before.
Thanks for the compliments.
thank you for everything. this channel helped me a lot during my engineering years.
hats off.
I am glad my videos have been helpful. Thanks.
I honestly like Eugene's videos very much and recommend them to my students, however, I have to also point out the other side as a university teacher. I have used simulations and animations as a means for teaching even before I found Eugene's channel. The problem I encounter is that many of the students actually are not prepared to go the extra step to even try to understand the principles (I am teaching measurement technology, electronics, renewable energies and programming). They are of the strong believe that they only need to train solving many exercises in order to pass the exam - and it might be enough in many other courses. But then they encounter a new, unexpected question on my exams and they fail. A couple of years ago students would pass by during the course and ask questions outside of the scheduled classroom hours, but this has - even before Corona and remote teaching - dropped out of fashion, especially during the 5 years or so.
So teachers teach this way because that’s how they where taught . Students learn this way because they never learnt to actually think. Becomes tricky too change the system for any individual. At least there is the internet for those curious enough!
@@MineGames66 I'm trying my best to break this circle for my students - sadly I cannot reach all of them...
@@uwezimmermann5427 I'm sure there are many who appreciate your effort. Keep up the good work!
I hope my teachers are taking notes from you sir.👍
I genuinely love this channel... an absolutely genius way to celebrate 10 years anniversary
Keep it up please 🌹
Thanks!!!
I completely agree with everything explained here! The time I've spent watching your videos was far more valuable than the time I spent in my math and physics classes.
For example, when I first learned about capacitors, my teacher used a jar of marshmallows as an analogy (e.g., bigger jars can hold more marshmallows). However, it made me think the charged particles were stored _between_ the capacitor's plates instead of _on_ the plates due to the schematic symbol. The analogy thus gave me the incorrect mental model and primarily confused me when I was studying RC (resistor-capacitor) circuits, even when presented with the equations behind them.
A couple of years later, when I came across your video on capacitors and capacitance, I got a clearer picture and immediately understood the concept better. This accelerated my learning experience and filled in many gaps in my knowledge!
All in all, I'm deeply grateful to have found your channel so I can firmly grasp even the most difficult topics (like quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, and calculus). Keep up the outstanding work for years to come! 😊
Thanks for the compliments. I am glad my videos have been helpful.
@@EugeneKhutoryansky You're very welcome, and Happy New Year 2024! 👍🎆
The first step in learning physics is to know relationship between formulas.
For example what is force in newtons? It is kg * m / s² (aka force of fallen brick that has broken glass)
Many of my friends just grind formulas without knowing relationship with reality. And it isn't effective way to learn physics
I wasn't able to really understand many concepts in Physics especially Quantum Physics until I found your videos.
Highly indebted.
Thank you
I am glad my videos have been helpful. Thanks.
This channel, “But Why” and “Branch Education” are hands down the best 3D rendered educational channels. I have learned more concepts in hours here than in years of school/university.
Thanks.
Never stop what you are doing, Eugene. You are a man of greatness.
Thanks for the compliment. More videos are on their way.
To be frank, based on my experience as a third-year undergraduate student, you can know all the theory in the world and still not be able to solve any problem. You still need *both* the understanding of the rules and a decent amount of practice to fully grasp their practical application. I learned this the hard way through many failed exams.
Using this video's analogy, you need to *play* chess to strengthen your understanding of those rules. I perfectly know all the basic rules of chess, yet I am still terrible at it to this day. Why? First, because I don't like this game, but more importantly, because I barely practiced it all these years.
-Therefore, as much as I like your educational videos, I disagree with this opinion piece. Colleges are doing fine. It's the students who need to do better by not relying too heavily on outside teachers, professors, or even internet educators.-
-Every person understands the world through their paradigms. Since paradigms can only be changed from the inside, the best teacher for any subject that is important to the person is that person themselves. Any outside teacher is simply a source of inspiration for students to change themselves. It is ultimately up to the student to decide whether they increase their knowledge or not.-
-To clarify, an outside teacher is a -*-person-*- , not the material of the subject, such as the books, the videos, the diagrams or the pictures.-
I strongly agree that students need both theory *and* practice to understand a subject be able to apply it. But I disagree completely with the second half of your comment. You seem to be saying that students should "not rely" on educators other than the professor provided by the university. Why? As another commenter on this video pointed out, many university professors tend to be subpar teachers due to their focus on research and lack of time to dedicate to pedagogy. If my professor sucks, I can't rely on them to teach me the course material, so my time is better spend watching a video on the subject or reading the textbook.
I have a personal example from this very quarter: the university administration screwed my physical chemistry professor by assigning him to a lecture hall without a chalkboard or whiteboard, so it's very difficult for him to give cogent lectures. So, classes typically end up amounting to a general overview of the topic, lacking any deep exploration of the theory, or any specific computational examples that could be of help on homework or exams. So, after a weak performance on the first exam, I started reading a quantum chemistry textbook (different from and superior to the assigned textbook) thoroughly and watching online lectures from various educators. The result?
I scored 100% on the second exam while attending the lectures over Zoom, half asleep. High exam scores are typical for me. I was already a very good student; the outside resources did not "inspire" me to become a better student, they just taught me what I needed to know, when the university was failing to do so.
@@nataliearcadia Thank you. In the second part of my argument, I actually meant that self-study is better than any professor's teachings. I didn't mean that students should rely on the professor provided by their university; in fact, I meant the opposite. Therefore, we actually agree here. 😄
I am not saying that practice is not important. In the very beginning of the video, the second sentence was "It takes many years of practice to become good at playing chess." My point was that if you are never told the rules of chess, then no amount of practice will ever make you good at it.
@@EugeneKhutoryansky Thanks. I apologize for misunderstanding you and take back what I've said.
I have tried to convey these thoughts as a high school student to my teachers and all I got were bad marks for 'destructive behaviour'. Also, many students don't see the necessity of differentiating between laws and rules because they just want to get a good mark and be rewarded by some stranger they will never see again afterwards.
The system is broken - we educate superficially thinking people, that are not trained in thinking independently. We are conditioning our next generations like animals.
Yes.
Woohoooo! Congratulations on 10 years mile stone! You deserve 10mil subs IMO! Underrated!
Thanks for the compliment.
If you have ever watched Prof. Pavel Grinfeld's lectures on tensor calculus or read his book on the subject, you might have noticed that the second chapter (and corresponding lecture) is titled "The Rules of the Game." This is one of the reasons why Prof. Grinfeld's lectures on the subject are among the best; he explains the simple rules before deriving anything else - much like a good chess teacher explaining the rules of chess before strategy.
This chess analogy was in feynmenn lectures too
Feynman's chess analogy was different. He said that what physicists are trying to do is analogous to trying to figure out the rules of chess just by watching chess games being played.
@@EugeneKhutoryansky oy yeah. Now i get it. Anyways thanks for replying
FIRST!
Eugene, Thank you. I have always had physics teachers that taught in the "academic" way, without really explaining what was really happening. That except one year with an amazing teacher, who used simple practical examples and made me understand that I loved the subject.
But I never could really understand things, and as I tend to learn things only if I understand how they work, I have always had low grades.
I have recently found your channel, and it is exactly what I wished for!
I am sorry you had to go through that. I am glad you found my channel and I hope you enjoy all my videos. Thanks.
When my class was taught the quadratic formula we weren't taught how it was derived. So I looked it up (pre-internet). When midterms came around, I didn't remember the quadratic formula anymore, but I knew how to derive it, and passed the test.
This channel is pure gold
Thanks for the compliment.
I like how you bring up the reality of arbitrary social conventions. I see so many poorly educated field workers try to compete with other higher educated people who do not work in their field but still understands the constructs of the work. One example would be an electrician arguing with an electronics engineer that a relay is in fact called a contactor because some smartass thought it was better to create a different name for the same thing. Said electrician would then go on and claim authority and superiority simply for using said made up arbitrary convention that an institute previously had made into an intellectual autoritative token when in fact we all know that an electronics engineer could do the work of an electrician but not necessarily the other way around. That might be a poor example, but every once in awhile we all stumble upon someone who hasn't actually learned anything other than simple bullshit terminology, and tries to use that as a means to show authority.
I don't know what a contactor is, but I absolutely get what you're saying and I very much agree this is a phenomenon. There are many who claim authority because they know ultimately meaningless conventions, they don't even realise how little they actually know, and what it means to truly understand something. Sad but also destructive.
Yup. It's the difference between understanding the fundamental problem/system/interaction/whatever talked about, vs. the names for its parts, which are really just handles for the mind to manipulate the parts of the problem. Of course it's easier if the names are consistent, but for someone who understands the real problem, inconsistent names are an annoyance. Someone who doesn't understand the problem, falsely thinks they understand it if they know the names. Now if they encounter someone who uses a different name, their shallow understanding hits a wall like your electrician guy. Someone who knows what they're talking about, sees past that to the actual mechanism.
Love Your Videos ✌✨
And Love Your Team For Educating us ❤
Thanks. I am glad you like my videos.
I am a second year Physics major. Prior to college I was able to derive my own equations and solutions to problems since the courses I was taking spanned an entire year rather than a single semester. Now however, extremely complex topics that require lots of thought to understand are squeezed into the span of a single semester and I find it increasingly difficult to actually learn things. I hate memorizing, I want to LEARN! I want to UNDERSTAND! I want to think FREELY and not be bound by looming deadlines! I am a STUDENT not a word document. I strive to delve further into academia, yet it is modern academia itself which is pushing me away.
"Never let your Schooling interfere with your Education". [Mark Twain]
Educe = "To bring out".
I LOVE this explanation. I’ve thought about this myself many times. The fundamentals are key! You just need the basics and it’s off to the races.
I'd love to see video explaining Veritasium's recent "
The Big Misconception About Electricity" explained in your style. Regardless, I'm very grateful for this channel and appreciate all the work that goes into it. Thank you very much for these amazing videos. Also thank you Kira Vincent for an amazing job narrating these videos.
Thanks for the compliments.
Amazing. I've always resonated with the idea of first principles thinking. University always seems to focus on procedures rather than fundamental concepts and as someone who'd rather spend time understanding principles, university felt worthless. I feel this is something important that isn't talked about a lot.
Happy anniversary Eugene! Congrats on 10 years. We all appreciate your time.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
I'm coming back to this video, after some time.
These videos have done a fantastic job of helping me understand the subject matter, but I am also now thinking back to my high-school days, and realizing, that I had a few very good teachers. What I learned in those classes, I took for granted, or even had a distaste for, at the time. But, as an adult, I am looking back, with a considerable amount of gratitude for those talented people, who cared enough for, and had the understanding, to be able to convey these ideas to a young teenager.
Those brilliant, and clever teachers, were rare, but I was lucky enough to have had more than one, as a growing boy.
Thank you teachers!
Your single short video covers lots of an hour lectures by teachers. Thanks very much for sharing valuable knowlege 🙏
Thanks.
"The actual key principles are lost, and people instead end up focusing on the procedures and strategies for solving the specific examples they're exposed to."
This is what frustrated me when I was a physics undergraduate student. All of the problems in early physics classes weren't about learning actual principles, so much as they were about memorizing the "trick" you're supposed to use to solve the problem. No explanation for any of the assumptions you make, why you can make certain choices, etc. You just make them because it's what the professor did, and -- most of the time -- it gives you the right answer.
Early physics classes were like listening to someone tell the punchline of a joke, and you having to infer what they must have said before to reach that punchline, while later physics classes would actually go back a few steps and describe the rest of the joke before the punchline that was missing before. It's better, but you still might not "get" the joke. Videos like these, though, are like someone filling you in on context of the joke and what makes it humorous.
Hey, I love you. Thank you so much for your art Eugene. In human history (or at least the western history that I'm aware of) there is a lot of record of texts being mostly transcribed into pictures to be able to help those held in systems without the opportunity to written language and those pictures are to this day understood as sacred. The videos you make are one of the most current analogues and a seemingly noble one at that. The topic of the video touches on another great importance of your art being even reaching out to teachers is a tricky task because of the dialectic issue, the student a teacher having different expectations on what it means to teach or learn "x". To the degree that I am taught I am self taught studying topics and minds while living a nomadic lifestyle and these videos are the type of thing that make me stop and realize that are are quality sources to learn from and work with. Thank you, -Alex
Thanks for the compliments and for the kind words.
Congrats and thanks for all you've done! Also special thanks for the story about the government official - made me laugh. I agree with the video completely.
Thanks!
I always enjoy watching educational videos on UA-cam, they are cool, simple, specific , informative , and easy to understand.
Sir Eugene. You have presented not an opinion. But the truth. I owe you so much intuition. I always choose derivation and having fun with solving problems. I'm always one of the best wherever I go in the field. It's largely part because of your videos that I watch since I was a highschooler. You shaped my mind. You fed my curiosity. You grew my potential. You are very appreciated, Mr. Eugene. Great philosophical video.
I am glad that my videos have been helpful and that they have made a difference. Thank you very much for the compliments.
Thank you for your brilliant work Mr. Khutoryansky
Thank you.
really your videos are great, extremely great. by time this channel will be the biggest channel on youtube and it really deserves. thanks for helping us.
Thanks for the compliments.
I like how Kira narrates the videos. However, I'm curious to hear Eugene's voice at least in one future video! ) Happy 10th!
Thanks for the compliments. You will never hear my voice on this channel, but there is a video of me that appears on my animal rights website and on my Facebook page. The links are available from my UA-cam home page.
When i was a kid and when i wanted to play chess with him, my dad was like: "Oh, you'll learn by playing."
I constantly asked him: "Can i do this? Can i Do that?"
Lol people often say 'you'll learn by playing' or 'you'll learn by doing' because that's the best they ever got 🤷. It's not the best way to learn. Asking questions is. He just doesn't want to answer questions.
I’m literally studying Physics to be a instructor in the future. You inspire me a lot, Eugene. Thank you so much:) 🙏
Thanks. I am glad to hear that my videos help inspire you.
This channel is like I said before, one of THE BEST educational sources.
Thanks.
A wonderful celebration of 10 years of exceptional teaching. May you have many more.
Thanks.
“You can develop your own strategy” I like this because when I develop my own strategy it’s the only time I really understand what’s happening
These animations are so Bowling Alley Screen When You Get a Strike that it hurts.
You have done, is doing and will do not only a favor for people that don't understand something, but in some way create the very base of understanding the subject in their minds, which it can create, by itself, creativity and excitement.
I want to thank you so much for that. You did create, you are creating and you will create new engineers, scientists, physicists that will likely change a bit of the world.
You are amazing.
Thanks for the compliments.
🇮🇳 love from india.
You teach even better than entire world..
Worlds best teacher 🎉 award goes to you 🥰🥰 thank u soo much for helping youth 🙏
Thanks for the really great compliments.
I owe a lot of thanks to your channel (and many other channels). Keep making great content! God bless you
I am glad my videos are helpful. Thanks.
Thanks Eugene and Kira. Much love from Guatemala!
Thanks.
You are undoubtedly a genius. I can see that clearly. Thank you very much for all of your efforts; I really appreciate it with all my heart! Thank you...
Thanks for the compliments. I am glad you like my videos.
I usually don't comment, but I have to. Thank you Eugene, for these videos and animation. I love seeing the same subject explained in many ways. Each different way I get explained the same subject I gain new insight on that topic and a new way of presenting it to others in a way, maybe they will find easy to understand. So many people have different ways to seeing things it's interesting how maybe the "standard" way of learning is obviously not fit for all cases. Thanks for 10yrs and cheers for many more.
Thank you very much.
I appreciated how the chess match you had shown us illustrated the point you were making about the queen.
I am glad you liked the queen sacrifice example. Thanks.
I appreciate your videos, Eugene. I'm sure you've helped many. I was fortunate to have halfway decent teachers and to often be able to figure out the underlying principles from a series of examples. But I was always frustrated and saw other students give up. Many students get into a trap of taking copious notes-- and not the good kind of notes. Just copying whatever the teacher said.
Thanks. By the way, I don't even see why note taking should be necessary. The teacher should just provide a copy of the lecture notes to everyone. The issue is that the concept of the university lecture was created before the printing press was invented, and the universities have yet to catch up to this technological innovation.
probably the best physics resource on the internet. thank you, Eugene and Kira.
Thanks.
Great video. Congrats for 10 years on youtube!
Thanks!
I’ve never been so intrigued and astonished by the simplicity in which Eugene provides difficult ideas into simple and graphical interpretations which such ease. Cheers for many years more years and long life to this channel.
Thank you very much.
I very much agree! Deep understanding of the underlying principles and the structure of each theory is The most important thing, especially in physics.
Also, in my opinion, it's very important to leave no gaps in this understanding ( or , at least, as few as possible). Most of the common misconceptions have their origin in these gaps.