Using math in physics -- Overview

Edward F. Redish

arXiv (arXiv: 2009.14271v1)

Generated on April 14, 2025

Abstract
The key difference between math as math and math in science is that in
science we blend our physical knowledge with our knowledge of math. This
blending changes the way we put meaning to math and even to the way we
interpret mathematical equations. Learning to think about physics with math
instead of just calculating involves a number of general scientific thinking
skills that are often taken for granted (and rarely taught) in physics classes.
In this paper, I give an overview of my analysis of these additional skills. I
propose specific tools for helping students develop these skills in subsequent
papers.

9/24/20
1 Using math in physics: Overview Edward F. Redish, University of Maryland - emeritus,
College Park, MD The key difference between math as math and math in science is that in
science we blend our physical knowledge with our knowledge of math. This blending changes
the way we put meaning to math and even to the way we interpret mathematical equations.
Learning to think about physics with math instead of just calculating involves a number of
general scientific thinking skills that are often taken for granted (and rarely taught) in physics
classes. In this paper, I give an overview of my analysis of these additional skills. I propose
specific tools for helping students develop these skills in subsequent papers. Many of the ideas
and methods I’m discussing here were developed in the context of studying introductory physics
with life science students — first, in algebra-based physics and then in NEXUS/Physics, an
introductory physics course designed specifically for life science majors. Students in these
classes often struggle with the idea that symbolic quantities in science represent physical
measurements rather than numbers and that equations represent relationships rather than ways to
calculate. Math in science is different from math in math. In science, symbols stand for a blend
— a mental combination of physical knowledge with knowledge of how a mathematical element
such as a variable or constant behaves. This changes the way we think about and use equations.
For example, when we define the electric field as 𝐸 = 𝐹/𝑞 we have in mind that 𝐹 is not
just an arbitrary variable but the specific electric force felt by the test charge 𝑞, a conceptual
blend of physics and math. In math, we would include the q-dependence explicitly in our label.
In physics, we do not. Rather, we expect the viewer to interpret the symbol as something
physical and therefore to realize that when 𝑞 changes, so does 𝐹. As a result, when 𝑞 changes, 𝐸
does not change, surprising students. ● Math in math classes tends to be about numbers. Math in
science is not. Math in science blends physics conceptual knowledge with mathematical
symbols. Math in science is about relations among physical quantities that are transformed into
numbers by measurement. As a result, quantities in science tend to have dimensions and units.
These have to be treated differently from ordinary numbers. Unlike ordinary numbers, different
kinds of quantities can’t be equated. Students wonder why equations like 𝑥 = 𝑡 (and
3 cm = 3 seconds) are forbidden but the equation 2.54 cm = 1 inch is allowed. I’ll discuss this in
detail in the paper in this series on Dimensional Analysis.1. Students don’t usually learn to do
this blending in math classes, and most students in introductory physics have no experience with
it.2 This blending has a lot of structure and results in differences in the ways we use symbols in
math and science. ● Math in math classes tends to use a small number of symbols in constrained
ways. Math in physics uses lots of symbols in different ways - and the same symbol may have
different meanings. In a typical algebra or calculus book, you will find very few equations with
more than one or two symbols and they tend to follow a predictable convention — x, y, z, and t
will be variables; f, g, and h will be functions; a, b, and c will be constants. In a typical physics
book, you will rarely find an equation with fewer than 3 symbols and you will often find ones
with 6 or more. And they won't follow the math conventions. This makes the equations we use in
physics look unfamiliar to students and raises their level of discomfort. ● The symbols in science
classes often carry meaning that changes the way we interpret the quantity. In pure math it
doesn't matter what we call something; in science it does. In science, we choose a symbol for a
variable or constant to give us a hint as to what kind of quantity we are talking about. We use m
for a mass and t for a time — never the other way round. Even more confusing is the fact that we
use the same symbol to mean different things. In my class, the symbol 𝑄 can stand for heat,
electric charge, or volumetric flow. 𝑇 can stand for a tension, a temperature, or the period
of an oscillation. You might say, “Well, sure. But the interpretation depends on the context. Then
it’s obvious what you mean.” True. But looking for the context means that you are already
blending your knowledge of what the symbols mean physically with your mathematical
knowledge. Equations in physics not only represent quantitative knowledge of the physical
world. Through the blend, they codify both physical conceptual knowledge and functional
dependence. I discuss these issues

9/24/20
2 in more detail in the papers in this series on Anchor Equations3 and Functional Dependence.4
● In introductory math, symbols tend to stand for either variables or constants. In science, we
have lots of different kinds of symbols and they may shift from constant to variable, depending
on what we want to do. Math in math seems so clean. A variable is a variable. A constant is a
constant. In physics, our constants can be universal constants, parameters, initial conditions; and
we might choose to differentiate with respect to them.5 ● In introductory math, equations are
almost always about solving and calculating. In physics it’s often about explaining. Every
semester, I have one or two students whose comments go something like, “He doesn’t explain
enough. He spends too much time doing algebra on the board.” These students haven’t picked up
on something I try to make explicit (but obviously don’t succeed in for all students): A derivation
of an equation is an explanation if you see the equations as carrying conceptual meaning. This is
something that is not obvious and is not easy to learn, especially when their other science classes
are not using math in this way. These “student difficulties” are different from the usual student
ones we might worry about. They’re not just lack of knowledge, like forgetting how to divide by
a fraction. These are more complex and “meta” — another level, overlaying everything the
students do. A lot of the literature in physics education is about helping students better
understand physics concepts. A focus on concepts is sometimes looked at as getting away from
the math. But how can we think about student thinking when the concept to be learned is
fundamentally mathematical as well as physical? Am I being unfair to math? I know some
mathematical physicists (and perhaps even some mathematicians) are going to complain that I’ve
made math into a straw man. Many of the things I say that math doesn’t do, it of course does —
in more advanced classes. In introductory physics, there’s some interesting “hidden” advanced
math.6 We use some very sophisticated mathematical structures in an introductory class because
we expect our students to interpret them not using fancy math but through the blend with
common physical knowledge. For example, the fact that the dimensions of an equation have to
match can be seen as a group theoretical statement: since the measurement scales are arbitrary,
the equations must transform by the same representation of the product of scaling groups.7
Defining a vector field mathematically correctly requires that students think about placing a
vector space at every point in space. This requires what’s known as describing space as a
manifold and creating a tangent bundle. Yikes! Physicists of course don’t need that fancy math
and we don’t teach it even in majors’ classes. It’s obvious that it makes no sense to equate a
distance and a time (unless you assume a fixed speed of light). It’s obvious what it means to have
a vector at every point in space. It’s like a weather map of wind speed. True. But the critical
element in being able to do a unit check or define an E field without the fancy math is building
the blend — mentally combining physical knowledge with mathematical representations. That
blending is neither obvious nor easy and needs to be taught. Am I asking too much? As an
experienced instructor in introductory physics, you may be feeling some distress at this point.
“My curriculum is already packed to the gills! I don’t have time to teach a whole bunch of new
content!” Agreed. But I am not suggesting adding new content. Rather, I am saying that if we
feel that it is important for students to learn to use math in science effectively then we have to
teach the content that we teach in a different way. These new learning goals don’t add to the
content of the class; they appear in all contents, identifying strategies that have general utility.
They are threads, a way-of-thinking that crosses the content that runs throughout the class, tying
it together with technique and modes of thought, like the warp and weft in a weave (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. The interleaving of content (weft) with general strategy learning (warp) Later in the
paper, I will present a brief list of some of the tools I use to teach mathematical thinking in
multiple contexts. But first, we need a deeper understanding of the barriers to students learning
these skills.

9/24/20
3 Analyzing how students think When we ask students to do the kind of “thinking with math”
that I’m describing, we often not only see them struggle to do it, we often find strong resistance.
In a series of interviews with life science students in an introductory physics class, Watkins and
Elby8 documented one student's views of math in science. Ashlyn: I don't like to think of
biology in terms of numbers and variables. I feel like that's what physics and calculus are for. So,
I mean, come time for the exam, obviously I’m gonna look at those equations and figure them
out and memorize them, but I just really don't like them. Ashlyn expresses considerable
discomfort with trying to use the equations for anything more than calculating. On the other
hand, in another context, she expresses delight in learning in her biology class (with models and
math) that the functional dependence of volume on size explains the reason we can’t have giant
ants that she had previously seen in a Bill Nye episode. Ashlyn: I knew that it doesn't work when
you make little things big, but I never had anyone explain to me that there's a mathematical
relationship between that, and that was really helpful to just my general understanding of the
world. It was, like, mind-boggling…. It was really, like, it blew my mind. I’ve seen both of
Ashlyn’s reactions from many of my students; resistance to using math to think with and yet
delight when the math lets them understand something they knew but didn’t understand why it
was so. To understand these complexities of student responses, we need to seek the root causes
of students’ resistance. I draw on the language of the resources theoretical framework, but a
detailed knowledge of the framework is not necessary to follow my analysis. I’ll give references
for those interested in more detail in “Digging deeper” below. The key idea is that knowledge
comes in basic pieces learned from experience in everyday life as well as through schooling.
These bits and pieces of knowledge are dynamically activated in the brain in response to both
external and internal stimuli. Some of the differences between math in math and math in science
that I’ve listed above are about expectations about the nature of physics knowledge —
epistemology — and some are about the kind of things we are talking about — ontology.
Knowledge about knowledge — epistemology: In thinking about student difficulties with math
in physics, it helps to think about student’s expectations about the nature of the knowledge they
are learning. These are internal stimuli that guide and constrain how students respond to learning
in our classes. These expectations may include ideas like, “I know this class is about memorizing
equations. I just have to find which equation has the right symbol in it.” or “I know I have bad
intuition about physics so I have to trust my math even if the result looks crazy.” I refer to this
kind of expectation as epistemology — knowledge about knowledge. Students’ epistemological
expectations can have profound effects on what they hear and how they think about what they’re
learning. I often ask a short essay question on my exams. This helps me get an idea of how the
students are thinking beyond “right or wrong”. Once, in my early days teaching algebra-based
physics, at the end of the first semester (Newtonian mechanics), I asked this on the final exam:
“What do you think is the most important equation you learned in this class?” To my
embarrassment, the most common answer was 𝑠=1/2 𝑎𝑡!. Newton’s 2nd law was rarely
mentioned. Clearly I needed to change the way I taught about equations. My students were
seeing equations as purely calculational tools, not as ways to help them think about physics or to
organize their conceptual knowledge. I totally changed my presentation to focus on Newton’s
laws as a framework for modeling. I discuss this in detail in the papers in this series on Anchor
Equations and Toy Models. A useful way to think about students’ epistemological expectations
is to consider the basic ways that they decide they know something: their epistemological
resources. These can be things they learned as infants (“I know because someone I trusted told
me”) or that they learned in school (“I know because I solved the equation and got this answer.”)
Some epistemological resources we want our students to learn in physics include: ● Symbolic
manipulation can be trusted — Algorithmic transformational steps starting from an application
equation lead to a trustable result. ● Physical meaning can be mapped to math — A
mathematical symbolic representation faithfully characterizes some feature of the physical or
geometric system it is intended to represent. ● If the math is the same, the analogy is good —
Mathematics has a regularity and reliability that is consistent across different applications. ● Toy
models give insight — Highly simplified examples can yield insight into complex mathematical
representation. ● Consistency is crucial — When you look at a problem in different ways you
should get the same result. This is particularly valuable when a physical and mathematical
perspective can be brought independently, confirming an answer in the blend. Note that
epistemological resources, like resources about physical knowledge, can contradict each other.
“More means more” can correctly imply “a bigger object has more inertia and is harder to
move”, but “Closer is stronger” implies that

9/24/20
4 less distance produces a bigger effect such as “closer to a fire is hotter,” so in this case, “less is
more.” The trick to using resources in solving problems is building coherent coordinated
collections of them and developing an understanding of the contexts in which each is
appropriate. Knowledge about things — ontology: A second issue that is helpful in thinking
about student difficulties with math in physics is ontology — their knowledge about what kind of
things we are talking about. ● Many of our concepts in physics divide something that physically
feels like a single concept into two mathematical representations. For example, students often
treat “motion” as a single thing, failing to distinguish velocity from acceleration. While they
have good physical experience with both motion and acceleration (catching a ball, feeling a
backward push when a vehicle accelerates), building the connection to rates of change is not
automatic. ● Some concepts in physics don’t match simple everyday ontologies (e.g., matter or
process) but require blends. Nobody promised us that physics was going to be just common
sense codified! Quantum physics is the most blatant example, where our description involves
characteristics that make objects look both like a particle (localized emission and absorption,
momentum conservation in collisions, …) and a wave (interference, uncertainty principle, …). In
fact, there are many examples of this, some of them explicit — like treating light as rays, waves,
or photons — and some implicit — like considering energy in its matterlike aspects (conserved,
has to be positive) and in its representational aspects (can be negative, treat like a location on a
graph).9 ● Some of our concepts in physics are defined mathematically and may not have an
obvious physical match. Particle physicists will be familiar with the fact that fundamental fields
(or “elementary particles”) are specified as to “what they are” by specifying how they respond
mathematically to various transformations — the rotation group (What’s its spin?), particle
exchange (Is it a fermion or a boson?), and the group of the Standard Model, U(1)xSU(2)xSU(3)
(What specific particle is it?) This same sort of “ontology as mathematics” happens in
introductory physics as well. We just tend not to notice it. It becomes obvious when we try to
explain what an electric field is without discussing vector fields; or when we try to explain why
crossed linear polarizers let light through when an angled linear polarizer is inserted between
them without talking about vectors and their decomposition. You might be able to do this (I
can’t), but it feels like trying to play charades with your hands tied behind your back. A math-in-
science toolbelt This analysis of the difficulties students have blending math with science raises a
lot of questions. Epistemological and ontological issues are meta — they run through much of
the specific content topics we teach. When we only focus on the list of physics topics we are
“covering”, we may miss the more general skills that we want students to develop along the way.
Physics majors manage to learn these skills, but often over many years (or even decades).
Understanding these deeper issues about the nature of physics knowledge and concepts is even
more important to our non-major physics students than any specific content we might choose to
teach. But our “I-only-have-to-take-one-year-of-physics” students tend to be focused on “just
making it through” and, if they are pre-meds, making sure they get a good score on the exams.
Very few will make the effort to think deeply about what they are learning. If we value learning
to use math as a scientist, we have to find ways to explicitly teach it to our students. The key is to
teach introductory physics students to make the transition from math as purely about numbers to
math as a tool to think about physics. To do this, I’ve developed a set of general purpose
strategies I call epistemic games or e-games for short: specific approaches that can be brought to
bear in a variety of problems. I describe learning to do these as developing your mathematical
toolbelt. I not only teach these methods explicitly, but each method has a specific tool icon.
Every time I use a tool in class, its icon appears on the slide. Every time it’s used in our text (a
free web-based wiki10) the icon appears. As new e-games appear, new problems using them
appear on clicker questions, quizzes, and exams. Here are some of the e-games that my team and
I have developed. In each paper in this series, I’ll pick one, show how it relates to building an
understanding of the use of math in science, and give examples and links to resources. 1.
Dimensional analysis 2. Estimation 3. Anchor equations 4. Toy models 5. Functional
dependence 6. Reading the physics in a graph 7. Telling the story Some of the icons used in the
NEXUS/Physics materials for these e-games are shown in figure 2. Instructional resources Many
of the ideas for this series of paper were developed in the context of studying physics learning in
a class for life-science majors. Materials from this project for delivering

9/24/20
5 instruction on the use of math in physics are available at the Living Physics Portal,11 search
“Using math in physics.” Figure 2. Some e-game icons from NEXUS/Physics: (a)
Dimensional analysis, (b) toy models, and (c) anchor equations. Digging deeper: Research
resources If you’re interested in digging into the physics education research literature a bit to see
how the issues in this paper are studied, take a look at Redish12 or Redish & Kuo.13 (Ref 14
discusses student surprising responses to the equation 𝐸 = 𝐹/𝑞 discussed at the
beginning of the paper.) The knowledge-in-pieces idea that led to the resources theoretical
framework comes from diSessa’s phenomenological primitives.14 The basic principles of the
Resources Framework are outlined in Hammer,15 my Fermi Summer School lecture16 (available
as a 1 E. Redish, Using math in physics - 1. Dimensional analysis, preprint. 2 This is especially
true since word problems were purged from the elementary school mathematics curriculum. 3 E.
Redish, Using math in physics - 3. Anchor equations, preprint. 4 E. Redish, Using math in
physics - 5. Functional dependence and scaling, preprint. 5 Even my physics graduate students
sometimes get queasy when asked to differentiate with respect to a universal constant (like ℏ, as
in the Feynman-Hellman theorem in a graduate quantum class). 6 Even introductory math
requires a blending of every-day sense with symbol, but in a more abstract and context-
independent way. See B. Sherin, How students understand physics equations. Cognition and
Instruction, 19 (2001) 479–541. 7 This is really what’s going on with unit checks. I’ll explain
this in the dimensional analysis paper, ref. . 8 J. Watkins and A. Elby, Context dependence of
students' views about the role of equations in understanding biology, Cell Biology Education -
Life Science Education 12 (June 3, 2013) 274-286. doi:10.1187/cbe.12-11-0185. 9 B. Dreyfus,
A. Gupta, and E. Redish, Applying Conceptual Blending to Model Coordinated Use of Multiple
Ontological Metaphors, Int. J. Sci. Ed. 37:5-6 (2015) 812-838. preprint on ArXiv), and Hammer
et al.17 The paper introducing the idea of epistemological resources is Hammer & Elby.18 The
idea of epistemic games was introduced by Collins and Ferguson.19 To see how epistemic
games and epistemological resources are observed, see Tuminaro and Redish20 for a study at the
algebra-based level, or Bing and Redish for a study at the advanced physics level. For some
papers on the ontological issues, see Gupta, Hammer, and Redish21 or Dreyfus et al. The
Feynman-Hellman theorem example is discussed in detail in Bing and Redish.22 The general
theory of meaning making through blending comes out of the cognitive linguistics literature23
and is discussed in Dreyfus et al. loc. cit. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the members
of the UMd PERG over the last two decades for many discussions on these issues, especially
Mark Eichenlaub, Ayush Gupta, David Hammer, and Deborah Hemingway. The work has been
supported in part by a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and NSF grants 1504366
and 1624478. 10 The NEXUS/Physics wiki, https://www.compadre.org/nexusph/ 11 The Living
Physics Portal, https://www.livingphysicsportal.org/ 12 E. Redish, Analysing the Competency
of Mathematical Modelling in Physics. In: T. Greczyło & E. Dębowska (eds) Key Competences
in Physics Teaching and Learning, Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 190 (2018). 13 E.
Redish and E. Kuo, Language of physics, language of math: Disciplinary culture and dynamic
epistemology, Science & Education, 24:5-6 (2015-03-14) 561-590. doi:10.1007/s11191-015-
9749-7 14 A. diSessa, Towards an epistemology of physics. Cognition and Instruction, 10:2-3
(1993) 105-225; 15 D. Hammer, Student resources for learning introductory physics, PER
Supplement to the Am. J. Phys., 68 (2000) S52-S59; 16 E. Redish, A Theoretical Framework for
Physics Education Research: Modeling student thinking, in Proceedings of the International
School of Physics, "Enrico Fermi" Course CLVI, Varenna, Italy, August 2003, E.Redish & M.
Vicentini (eds.) (IOS Press, 2004). 17 D. Hammer, A. Elby, R. Scherr, & E. Redish, Resources,
framing, and transfer, in J. Mestre (ed.), Transfer of Learning: Research and Perspectives,
(Information Age Publishing, 2004). 18 D. Hammer & A. Elby, On the form of a personal
epistemology. In B. Hofer & P. Pintrich (eds.), Personal
9/24/20
6 Epistemology: The Psychology of Beliefs about Knowledge and Knowing (Lawrence
Erlbaum, 2003) 169-190. 19 A. Collins and W. Ferguson, “Epistemic forms and epistemic
games: Structures and strategies to guide inquiry,” Educational Psychologist, 28(1) 25-42 (1993).
20 J. . Tuminaro and E. F. Redish, Elements of a Cognitive Model of Physics Problem Solving:
Epistemic Games, Phys. Rev. STPER, 3, 020101 (2007). 22 pages 21 A. Gupta, D. Hammer, and
E. Redish, The Case for Dynamic Models of Learners' Ontologies in Physics, J. of the Learning
Sciences, 19:3, 285-321 (2010); JLS 20:1, 151-162 (2011); JLS 20:1, 163-168 (2011). 22 T. J.
Bing and E. F. Redish, Epistemic complexity and the journeyman-expert transition, Phys. Rev.
ST Phys. Educ. Res., Vol. 8 (Feb 2012), 010105. doi:10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.8.010105. 23 G.
Lakoff & M. Johnston, Metaphors We Live By (U. Chicago Press, 1980/2003); G. Fauconnier &
M. Turner, The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind's hidden complexities (Basic
Books, 2003).