Thinking in Physics: The Pleasure of Reasoning and Understanding

Read this book if you care about students really understanding physics and getting genuine intellectual satisfaction from doing so. Read it too if you fear that this goal is out of reach – you may be surprised! Laurence Viennot here shows ways to deal with the awkward fact that common sense thinking is often not the same as scientific thinking. She analyses examples of frequent and widespread errors and confusions, which provide a real eye-opener for the teacher. More than that, she shows ways to avoid and overcome them. The book argues against over-emphasis on “fun” applications, demonstrating that students also enjoy and value clear thinking.
The book has three parts:
• making sense of special scientific ways of reasoning (words, images, functions)
• making connections between very different topics, each illuminating the other
• simplifying, looking for consistency and avoiding incoherent over-simplification
The book is enhanced with supplementary online materials that will allow readers to further expand their teaching or research interests and think about them more deeply.

Laurence Viennot is emeritus professor at the Université Denis Diderot (Paris 7) and contributed to the creation of the LDPES (Laboratoire de Didactique de la Physique dans l'Enseignement Supérieur) laboratory, now part of the Laboratoire André Revuz. She has for a long time been responsible for the Master's course in science teaching, but devotes herself equally to training physics instructors. Her books and publications are recognised worldwide as sources of reference (Teaching Physics, Enquête sur le concept de causalité, etc.).
Previous books:
VIENNOT L. 1979. Le raisonnement spontané en dynamique élémentaire. Paris : Hermann.
VIENNOT L. 1996. Raisonner en physique: la part du sens commun. Avec la contribution de A. Benséghir, H. Caldas, F.Chauvet, J.L. Closset, W. Kaminski, L. Maurines, J. Menigaux, S. Rainson, S. Rozier, E. Saltiel, Bruxelles: De Boeck.
VIENNOT L. 2002. Razonar en fisica. La contribucion del sentido comun. Trad: M.J. Pozo Municio. Madrid: Ant Machado libros (Visor Distribuciones).
VIENNOT L. 2001. Reasoning in Physics   The part of common sense, Trad. A. Moisy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Ac. Pub.
VIENNOT L. 2002. Enseigner la Physique. Avec la collaboration de U.Besson, F. Chauvet, P. Colin, C. Hirn-Chaine, W. Kaminski, S. Rainson. Bruxelles: De Boeck.
VIENNOT L. 2003. Teaching physics. With the collaboration of U. Besson, F. Chauvet, P. Colin, C. Hirn-Chaine, W. Kaminski, S. Rainson. Trad. M. Greenwood & A. Moisy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Ac. Pub.
VIENNOT L. & DEBRU C. (Eds.) 2003. Enquête sur le concept de causalité. Paris: PUF.
VIENNOT L (Dir.) 2009. Didactique, épistémologie et histoire des sciences – Penser l’enseignement. Collection Sciences, histoire et société, Paris : PUF.
VIENNOT, L. 2011. En physique, pour comprendre . Collection Grenoble Sciences. Paris : EDP Sciences.