When it's time to sit back and think again

摘要

Software designed to help physicists tackle complicated mathematics seems to be encouraging students to focus on the wrong aspects of scientific problems. Interested in how students use computer programs to solve problems, physicists Thomas Bing and Edward Redish of the University of Maryland, College Park, analysed videos of teams of students as they worked on their assignments. Among other tools, the students used Mathematica, a program that crunches not only numbers but also symbols, enabling it to do algebra and calculus.