Re: an interesting question. Please answer. Thanks.

terry wrote:
On Feb 19, 2:57 pm, Dudley Henriques <dhenriq...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Don't mistake the humorous attempt in my post to you.
After spending the better part of my life involved with flight test and
high performance airplanes, I'm no stranger to math and physics :-)

But my peripheral point, although formatted with humor, still holds
water, and that water by my experience is being carried by the Lord of
Occam.
--
Dudley Henriques- Hide quoted text -
In flight instruction, one has to remember that the average student
might not even come close to understanding these issues addressed with a
formula. This shouldn't be construed to mean that the average student
isn't smart, as smart they are, but it does indicate at least through my
over 50 years teaching people to fly that what works best with scenarios
like the one we have been addressing is a well structured explanatory
approach that uses words and examples instead of cold numbers and formulas.
The math and physics are indeed important, and indeed there will be
students out there who understand the physics well enough to teach it to
us both, but teaching newbies to understand aerodynamics is not the same
as giving a lecture on Specific Excess Power to a class at a Test Pilot
School.
Both approaches have their place. It's recognizing the place that
defines the good teacher. :-))

I do appreciate your humour Dudley and agree to disagree, not on the
pros and cons of teaching people to fly of course, because I have
about as much experience as mxs in that area, but on the general
principle of using words and examples instead of "cold " numbers, that
very phrase suggests to me we are made of different stuff, and thats
probably why I taught science and you taught flying. Words have
different meanings even for those of us who speak English, let alone
foreign languages, Numbers and equations on the other hand are
universal and 1+1 will always equal 2. I never see anything cold
about numbers and equations, hell even my licence number is a
palindrome!

I personally feel a lot more comfortable about my flying when I can
calculate things that I need to understand, instead of just having
vague understandings like increasing wt increases stall speed, thats
nice to know of course , but I would prefer to know by how much, and I
want to know why my Cessna table of takeoff distances increases as
the temperature decreases at the same density altitude, because
usually when the maths doesnt add up its my first warning that I dont
really understand what I think I understand. After all its the things
you dont know you dont know that are likely to kill you.
I dont want to give the impression I have a HP programmable in my
flight bag, I can assure you I dont, but I can only afford to fly 50
hrs a year max, I can afford a lot more time on my PC thinking about
those 50 hrs.
Terry

Yes, I'm afraid we will have to agree to disagree on the issue of proper flight instruction.

Math and Physics are wonderful things and people who fly airplanes should be encouraged by all means to learn the physics and use the math, BUT....and this is a big BUT.......it's the explanatory approach that keeps people alive in airplanes.
This doesn't mean by a long shot that the math and physics are put aside completely; far from it. In flight instruction, the good CFI has to be able to insert just the right amount of physics and math coupled with explanations of both to satisfy the comprehension level needed for each specific student taught on THAT student's specific retention level.
This means you will have a student who is a scientist at 10AM and possibly a housewife at 11AM.
Trust me, being a good CFI is extremely difficult. :-)

Remember, you're not teaching in a classroom here, and the result of misunderstanding and lack of comprehension can kill people.
Your classroom is traveling at 100mph plus and what you are teaching your student to do must be understood and retained during the few hours that constitute the dual training period before solo. If the instructor tries to do this by throwing a lot of math and physics at a student that the student doesn't have the background to absorb, the instructor won't be able to teach the student anything. If on the other hand, the student brings a science background to the table, this is a plus for the instructor.
If the CFI fails to teach the student what the student needs to know in the few hours they have together before solo, they can actually KILL the student at solo.

What's needed in flight instruction is the ability to take complicated technical material that includes math and physics and explain it in terms the student can understand, then demonstrate how it works in the air.
This having been said, EVERY good CFI will encourage every student to study at a level deeper than that required to fly the airplane. This secondary level is where pilots ADD to their education and it's here that the real math and science is studied.

--
Dudley Henriques
.

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