Reforms in Teaching University Physics: Development of the Seminar and the Laboratory in the 1830s and 1840s

Abstract

In addition to teaching, during the middle decades, professors of physics in Germany came to advance their field through original research, and universities added another use for physics instruction. They then not only provided general education in physics for students of the traditional professions but also physics training for those—still few—who pursued a career in physics. Instead of having to depend solely on chance encouragement and self-study, university students who were attracted to physics were introduced to research methods by physics teachers who were themselves researchers. In the physics laboratory, students handled apparatus not only to learn about nature but also to learn methods of investigating nature. Likewise, in the seminar they solved mathematical problems in physics to learn methods of investigating nature mathematically. A new spirit of teaching physics—a wish to stimulate students to independent thought, as Ohm had urged—entered the universities where the better physicists taught. The new teaching found its place in new institutions within the university such as the teaching laboratory, the physics seminar, and the physics colloquium.