TYPING OF PHYSICAL QUANTITIES IN THE GENERAL PHYSICS COURSE AT TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

Abstract

For a quantitative description of any physical phenomenon, we need physical quantities of different types. Usually when teaching physics courses in technical higher educational institutions, they divide two types of physical quantities: scalar and vector ones. In the present study, we offer a bit different typing (classification). Namely, we specify scalar, algebraic, complex, and vector quantities. The first two are set with a single number however, for scalar quantities, this number never becomes negative whereas, for algebraic, it might have negative and positive values. For example, the modulus of a vector is scalar but the projection of a vector to an axis is algebraic quantity. Such dividing, in our opinion, has several advantages with respect to the commonly used one. First, it allows to check in any physical equation not only dimensions but also the type of physical quantities; this helps to cut off a priory wrong formulas. Second, such typing is already shows through the standard students’ textbooks implicitly. After discussion of the advantages of our typing, we present a table where about 60 physical quantities necessary for studding physics in a technical university are collected and typed. We believe that our typing will help future bachelors of engineering and technology to use successfully knowledge obtained during the studding general physics, the obtained skills will be useful when studying special disciplines as well as in their future professional activities.