This is what I have learned. Physics is not difficult. More often than not, the students don't have a good physics teacher.
@pandian Many teachers do not instil understanding, only learning facts. Their students cannot reason and take themselves forward and enjoy it.
@SteelFolk So true.
@pandian This is very true, I understood it best when I had a passionate enthusiastic teacher, who spoke more than made us write down notes, he wouldn't stop explaining until everyone confidently understood the topic. i really enjoyed that class especially since he'd use real life examples to make us understand even better. I love physics but not when its being taught by someone who just repeats the textbook line for line
@pandian It's certainly true that teacher failures can exist. I had a general science teacher in high school who skipped the part of the textbook about evolution because he didn't "believe" in evolution, for example. (And that was in the early 1970s, not during the Scopes trial.)
But there are also students like me who have trouble conceptualizing things like, say, functions. I can read and reread a paragraph or two that describe what they are and how they work, and the result is always a "brain freeze" that leaves me just as ignorant as before I read those paragraphs. The parts and pieces of a function make sense, but when I try to assemble them into a single concept, my brain locks up.
Reading about particle and field physics is a source of great enjoyment for me. I even have a pretty good handle on Relativity, conceptually. The Lorentz transformation is a favorite thing to ponder and calculate (because no hard math there!). I've always been deeply curious about reality and all its doings. But when it comes to physics, I can't do the math, and it's not because I haven't tried or because I'm somehow more stupid than everybody else. Algebra and geometry make sense to me, but that's where it stops. Despite being embarrassed by that fact, I'm unable to find a solution. I guess I need a brain implant. I'll have the ability to improvise music stuck in there while I'm at it, 'cause I can't do that either after about sixty years of trying.
@pandian I agree with this entirely.