Foes of Evolution Set Sights on New Target: Gravity

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http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/2005/05/foes_of_evoluti.html#more

 

May 24, 2005

Foes of Evolution Set Sights on New Target: Gravity

 

If a group of concerned parents gets its way, high school physics

students may soon be required to learn about alternative explanations

of gravity. The parents say that a one-sided focus on Newton's

so-called universal law of gravitation is unfair to students who don't

believe in gravity. If they prevail, physics teachers may be forced to

read a statement acknowledging that our understanding of gravity is

just a theory.

 

Is Einstein's 'theory of relativism' next?

 

By Cole Walters, education correspondent

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DOVER, PA—It is a staple of high-school physics classes: the story of

Isaac Newton's encounter with a certain apple. As scientific wisdom

would have it, Sir Isaac was sitting beneath a tree one afternoon when

the offending apple dropped down upon his head, leading him to coin an

explanation of one of the universe's greatest mysteries: why do things

fall out of the sky?

 

Called the universal theory of gravity, Newton's so-called law is

taught to physics students everyday. But a growing movement of parents

wants to change that. They say that Isaac Newton's theory of

acceleration and velocity is just that—a theory—and that forcing

students to accept a Newtonian view of the natural world is unfair to

those who don't believe in gravity.

 

An accelerating movement

This small Pennsylvania town south of Harrisburg is at the center of

the movement to force high school physics teachers to introduce

alternative explanations of the force of gravitation. But parents here

reject the claim that they're trying to ban teachers from mentioning

gravity, or the increasingly controversial Sir Isaac Newton. Rather,

they say, their goal is to supplement the existing physics curriculum.

 

Gravity_law "

It's just not fair to the young men and women who attend

physics classes in Dover that they learn about one theory over and

over, " says curriculum improvement advocate Lorraine Dittie. " What

we'd like to see is a more a balanced presentation. "

 

Just a theory

If parents and advocates for change like Dittie get their way, physics

teachers may be required to read a statement to their classes as early

as next fall, acknowledging that Newton's explanation of gravity is a

theory, not a law as it has often been described in the past. " If it's

a law, that means that there are penalties for breaking it, " explains

Dittie. " Newton obviously came up with one theory of how gravity

works, but there are others as well. "

 

God's will

One such theory holds that Isaac Newton was chosen by God, who

signaled his interest in the British physicist and mathematician by

dropping an apple on his head. While students would still be exposed

to Newton's ideas, they would largely bypass his influential work on

physics, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, focusing

instead upon his deeply-held religious beliefs and his later work in

which he attempted to date the events depicted in the bible.

 

God_gravity_1

Physicists gravitate to secularism

But not everybody is happy about the new plan. Dover Senior High

School physics teacher and golf coach Lou DeGregorio says that he's

already got enough to teach, and that adding new explanations of

gravity may force him to cut other subject areas from his curriculum,

including force and equilibrium, static electricity or simple harmonic

motion.

 

Mr. DeGregorio also questions why the parents have chosen to single

out Newton's law of gravity for their efforts, noting that the 17th

century mathematical formulation has largely been replaced by Albert

Einstein's theory of relativity. " I don't want to say that these

people are idiots but they obviously don't know a whole hell of a lot

about physics. "

 

Next up: the theory of relativism

For her part, Mrs. Dittie says that she's all too familiar with

Einstein's theory—and that her curriculum improvement group is already

contemplating launching a charge against the German physicist.

 

" At least he acknowledged that all he'd come up with was a theory, "

says Dittie. " But the last thing we need to expose our kids to is a

theory of relativism. They're already being told that there's no right

or wrong. If you want to learn about Einstein, fine. I just don't

want my tax dollars going to pay for it. "

 

Do you think it should be against the law for high-school physics

students to learn about gravity? Talk back to colewalters1.