Welcome back. Looking forward to your insight.
Final item on the housekeeping agenda: my approach and method. I still believe this statement to be true :—
My "tactic" is called the Socratic method of teaching. I can just tell you what's what, but history has shown that you will just sidestep it, ignore it, and move on to the next knee-jerk claim. Instead I'm helping you teach yourself.
I acknowledge that you have written as follows :—
@Jay - you could have easily said this in 5 seconds, and I would have learned it just as well with 100x less time. I suspect your goal is to "school me", not "teach me".
If Jay had corrected my premise regarding the "Law of Conservation of Energy", I would have conceded on that instantly...
I spent hours learning something that should have taken seconds, simply because I didn't think I was "missing something easy but vital".
Ever since I realized my stupid "Conservation of Energy" wildcard was a dud, I've spent time going down the more complex path (would have done this sooner with a small correction).
Or if not -- Jay, the expert -- should simply say "you ALSO need to add in this other factor/concept"... and I will.
But I simply don't believe it. Your entire tenure at this forum is characterized with your refusal to accept plainly shown facts. Even when I suggested that you couldn't just ignore the heat term as you did, you dug in and tried to reverse the burden of proof. And that came after a long period where you insisted you didn't need to start with an energy balance equation. The notion that you'll simply accept what your critics here tell you is preposterous and completely out of keeping with the evidence.
While we're on this topic, let's be abundantly clear: You need to stop blaming other people for your lack of preparation. When you can demonstrate being as tenacious in challenging your own beliefs and assumptions as you are in challenging those you disagree with, then you can place blame. Until then, people are having to waste time bringing to your attention facts you should have known already or been able to look up yourself. No, we aren't letting you persist in error so that we can just make more hay out of it later. You persist in your errors for exactly as long as you desire to.
I taught engineering at the college level for a short time before going into professional practice, and I was fairly highly reviewed by my students. And yes, I'm quite accustomed to the trope of what the law professors call the "gunners," the students who think they know more than the instructor and are quite willing to waste a lot of class time trying to show that from positions of considerable ignorance. And yes, the Socratic method is the proper approach to turn what might start out as a, "Get out of my classroom!" moment into a true teaching moment. You don't seem to want to challenge your own assumptions until you're given a reason that rises higher than, "Some guy on ApolloHoax said so."
It's feeling more and more like he's just trying to get a free education at Jay's expense.
If the guy had any integrity he'd provide his address so Jay could invoice him for tutoring services.
If that were true then I'd be charging you all a fee.
I will probably return to teaching when I retire from practice. Why? Because there's nothing more satisfying than the look on a student's face when they finally solve a problem that's been vexing them, and do so with full understanding of how the solution works. This stuff is
hard. I do like teaching. But my ability and desire to do so in this forum is obviously limited.
I am a teacher, and one of the challenges of the profession is identifying exactly where in a complex process a student is having a misunderstanding. There are a lot of different ways to reach even the same wrong answer sometimes, and finding the exact issue is an important step toward providing the targeted instruction that will lead the student to the most thorough understanding.
This. What non-teachers don't understand is that there are some classic and traditional ways to misunderstand commonly misunderstood subjects. Thermodynamics, orbital mechanics, and electrodynamics are just a few examples from my fields. When we teach those, we learn to recognize the signs of those specific misunderstandings and try to find the right way to dispel them. When the student is reluctant, the way that certainly does not work is simply telling them they're wrong. A student that begins a discussion with the firm belief that they cannot possibly be wrong will never drop that until things they are led to learn make them say, "Oh, I see now how I was wrong." No, that's not amplified in this case to make lots of rhetorical hay out of someone's mistakes. But the lesson you learn that way should be clear—your hubris is your own worst enemy. You keep insisting that I'm going to rub your nose it something, but if you paid attention you'd realize I'm not.
Socratic method is best employed AFTER someone has demonstrated the inability to learn a concept. It is NOT APPROPRIATE for use in conveying simple theories or pointing out "you missed something there" (which would have been immediately well-received). So using it as your FIRST METHOD - is simply for "avoidance and posturing".
The Socratic method works best when people have arrived at their beliefs via a failure to think critically on their own. It focuses on exposing weaknesses in the underlying assumptions in ways that are difficult to refute by simply sidestepping them. It is singularly successful because it requires the other party to think about questions and come up with answers.
If a student of yours is trying to make a proof, but is simply omitting a simple, but crucial concept -- do you deliberately let them go on and on for a long time - THEN tell them about it, after they've made a fool of themselves? Or do you simply "offer the correction as you notice it" so that they can benefit from the "2nd set of eyes" much more quickly, and start being more productive quicker? I'd like to know which type of teacher you are.
I'd like to know what kind of student you are, because that approach has been tried by others in your other threads and has not succeeded. You assiduously do not incorporate new revelations of fact or technique into your thinking. You just move on to the next knee-jerk reason for rejecting it.
I corrected myself, and was pissed because I'm certain that Jay saw my error a day earlier. His motives are not well-meaning "teaching". He's trying to win a debate here, not solve a problem.
I'm trying to teach you to solve a problem you should have solved for yourself before even coming to this forum. You started with the knee-jerk answer that nothing you read on Bob Braeunig's site could be relied upon because he was not an expert, and that therefore Apollo "broke basic physics." Quite a number of people told you that this was because your understanding of physics was incomplete, but you would have none of that. Most of the rest of this debate—which you are obviously trying to win rather than solving a problem—has been you continuously setting onerous tasks for everyone else. You're "pissy" because I'm making you do work you should have done already.
I saw the error in your reasoning when you first asked this :—
So which claim are you suggesting:
1. The engine only operates at 60% efficiency in steady state?
2. Or that we can Break the Law of Conservation of Energy
Why do you think I asked you where that figure came from? Had you answered that question instead of trying to spring a cross-examination "Gotcha!" moment on you, we would have arrived much earlier at the energy balance equation and much earlier to your error in considering only kinetic energy in the balance equation. You persist in error exactly as long as you desire to.
But I had an inkling of what it might be when you posted this, many pages prior :—
I made a claim that "all other references I could find tend to say that Thrust at Launch is LOWER due to the exhaust being constrained...
I asked you where that 60% came from not because I wondered, but because I already knew where it came from and I figured you were ignoring pressure thrust (as so many sources largely do, including Sutton & Biblarz). That's why I was so keen to have you write the energy balance equation so we could uncover your assumption that heat could be ignored. Now could I have told you all of this declaratively? Yes, and I did. Every time I tried to raise the subject of what the sources of thrust were, you fell back to the incorrect understanding that increased pressure impeded and therefore lowered thrust, and conflated the notion of chamber pressure and exit plane pressure.
So no. Straightening you out is not simply a matter of telling you the things you're getting wrong and expecting you to abide by that. My method is working, and I have shown proof that it is and proof for why it's necessary. I will not be changing my approach, so you might as well stop whining about it now.
First, it gives them the opportunity to discover their own error, which is a good opportunity for me to reassess their understanding of the concept in general. Second, it gives me an opportunity to try to understand their error in the full context of the problem so I can try to better understand their thought process and help them most efficiently by targeting their specific needs once we get to breaking down their work.
This is exactly what I have practiced in this thread. The opportunity for a student to discover their own error is coupled with their joy in having done so, and (ideally) the motive to do more of that in the future. The Socratic method is a systematic way of unraveling the assumptions upon which a conclusion is based, but in a way that permits the student to discover and take ownership of it and not just copy or parrot the reasoning of the teacher.
I agree that Jay may have seen that specific error much earlier, but you make so many that he may legitimately not have been certain which error or errors you were making. I don't believe your assessments of his motives are accurate. My read on the whole exchange is that Jay is actually interested in showing you how to find the answer rather than just providing it.
I am, for the reasons I already articulated. I see the arguments in so many of the other threads failing to make headway precisely because the claimant is allowed to dismiss inconvenient facts simply because they "belong" to someone else. I wanted you, Najak, the claimant to write out the energy balance equation not to rub your nose in what was perhaps your initial inability to do so, but so that you would own the concept. And in your having done so, I was provided with a framework that you had bought into and could then be shown the right answer in a way that wouldn't be just dismissed with your prior handwaving such as, "But PRESSURE means LESS THRUST"—a concept you can now put into better perspective.
What is your objection to a "Teacher-student" relationship with someone who is a qualified expert in their field and you are a self-proclaimed rookie? An intellectually honest person would be grateful that someone is investing time and energy to help them understand this complex material.
Stepping away from addressing Najak directly, it's clear the relationship he wants is more akin to that between a witness and opposing counsel. He wants to cross-examine the facts into irrelevancy, discredit the witness, and make something that sounds good for a lay jury—but doesn't actually get at the problem. He wants the answer to be simple and easily-digestible. He doesn't want to learn any rocket science and has stated as much. He's only interested in a showy fly-by that minimizes the effort he has to put into the problem.
I will not be changing my approach.
