A Study Of The Influence Of Mathematics On Physics Studies In The Senior High School

Physics is a natural science;it requires a high level of mathematical knowledge. On one hand, the development of physics can not get away from mathematics;on the other hand, mathematics is the groundwork of physics development,many solutions to physical problems are produced by combining mathematical methods and physical thoughts. Mathematics is the language and tool to learn physics; it plays a vital role in the process of forming cognitive structure of physics for students. Because of its generality, mathematics provides the best form for describing abstract physical concepts and rules. Besides, brief and tight way of thinking owed by mathematics simplifies and speeds up people's physical way of thinking. Physics in high school pay more attention to quantitative analysis than it does in junior school, so mathematics is more often used in analyzing and calculating physical problems. But in reality, students'mathematical knowledge is far behind requirement. Investigate the relation between mathematics and physics in high school study, to summarize mathematical knowledge and means needed by physics in high school level. Meanwhile, we hope this research will have a feedback on physical teaching in high school and we also hope to find effective ways to help students solve problems caused by lacking mathematic knowledge.By collecting science scores of students of senior grade two from a king school and using the software SPSS, this research analyzed coefficient between physical scores and other science scores to investigate the relation between physical study and study of other subjects. Based on works done before, this study also collected mathematical knowledge which is needed by physical study both in junior school and senior school. In order to have a thorough knowledge of the influence of maths on physical study in high school, the writer of this paper questioned more than one thousand students from ten different high schools in GuiZhou province for two times. At last, the research made the following conclusions:First, most of students thought that mathematics had influence on physics. The majority considered that their capability to use mathematic knowledge to solve physical problems was limited, only part of students thought they were good at applying mathematical knowledge to solving physical problems. The level of mathematical ability matched with their physical scores.Second, mathematical knowledge did have effect on ways of solving physical problems, but it had little effect on designing of physical experiment and operation.Third, statistics of mathematical ways used in solving physical problems showed that students tended to choose several specific mathematical ways at different stages of physical study in high school. Physical teaching should attach much importance to those mathematical ways.Fourth, referring to connection between physics in junior school and senior school, most of students said that they couldn't adjust to the situation that quantities calculation increased much than before.All in all, this research provided real data for the interaction among different subjects in high school. In addition, this research obtained some conclusions which were different from people's subjective experiences. On the basis of teaching practice and reference in existence, this paper also came up with some suggestions and measures to train students'ability to apply mathematics to physical study.