Different Aspects of Creativity

  • Gorzkowski, Waldemar (Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland Secretariat of the International Olympiad, Warsaw, Poland)
  • Published : 1994.12.01

Abstract

"Is a given boy or girl gifted in physics\ulcorner" That is a very complicated question and it is not easy to answer it as creativity and talents have many aspects. The lecture is devoted to analysis of several of them. In particular, we shall discuss the following points: 1) "Poets in physics". Some pupils have a seldom ability to create very beautiful, intellectual constructions starting from very few assumptions. Any building consists of commonly used bricks or other building elements, any book contains only several tens of commonly used letters or other graphic elements, also any painting may be created by appropriate use of several colors. Some buildings are nice, some not. Some paintings are beautiful, some not. Certain pupils, by appropriate use of several simple laws, are able to create beautiful constructions. They are like poets writing poetry by using several tens of letters known to everybody. 2) "Free hunters". Some pupils solve even very typical problems in a very untypical ways. Their independence in thinking is especially valuable. 3) "Small discoverers". Even very rich syllabuses do not contain whole physics. Some pupils e.g. during solving problems discover laws or rules that are absent in the syllabus. For example, some of them are able to make use of symmetry or dimensional analysis without any preliminary knowledge of that matter. The considerations are illustrated with different examples taken from physics or mathematics. The subject is very large and, of course, we are not able to present the problem in a complete way.o present the problem in a complete way.

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