What does this community mean by students?

Question

So the title says all. What is the meaning of a student of Physics as per this community? I ask this because there are students at many levels: 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th graders, undergraduates, graduates etc.

REASON FOR THIS QUESTION

I am a 10th grader. I posted a question (Tension in a pulley system) and it was put on hold, despite receiving an upvote. I understand, that for 99% people here, the question would take less than 10 seconds to solve. I also understand, that there are many answered questions, similar to my question, and their answers fully apply to my question. However, the answers begin with the very part that I have a doubt in.

I realize it's because of lack of concept clarity (about tension) that I am not able to understand. Realizing that the community rules wanted me to include my efforts at solving the question and a specific thing which I wanted to ask, I edited the question, and in the comments, wrote to two people who chose to vote for putting the question on hold to review and open the question.

However, after a few days, the question was closed, without a comment from any one explaining what was it lacking.

So, if these questions are too trivial for people here, should I leave this website?

UPDATE: OK, I will open a new question on the main site. Discussion over from my side.

Answer 1

Introductory remarks

First some remarks to address specific points or misconceptions in your post, then I'll try to pick apart this case.

1. I don't think there is an agreed definition of "student". I take the word to mean any one who is seriously studying the subject. Being in secondary school certainly is no barrier to be a full participant on Physics SE.

   The key word (in my personal (not moderator powered) opinion) is "seriously". It doesn't mean you have to be an expert, but it does mean you have to be acting as physicist: taking basic concepts and applying them to build a understanding. You should also use the discipline specific vocabulary and the usual techniques in terms of drawing and labeling figures to help you along.

   I'll discuss my understanding of your question a little more in a further down.

2. As I've remarked before there isn't an actual difference between "on hold" and "closed". They represent the same condition in the database that backs the site and the different words are only there to indicate to new users that this condition is not irrevocable. The code that writes the messages uses a threshold time in that state to decide which phrase to use.

3. When you edit a held question it gets put into the review queue for higher rep users to look at (I think this only happens the first time you edit after the question is held). People did see your question and both votes cast were to leave it closed.

4. Just showing what you have tried is not enough to rescue a homework-like question. You have to render the question into a form where it has general applicability rather than being useful only for solving the question in front of you. You accomplish this by making the question about the physics concept where you are stuck (I almost wrote "concepts", but that would have been a mistake because each question should address one concept).

   I know this can be difficult and that you may not have a clear idea of what that request even means. I teach a lot of introductory physics courses and many students don't "get it" even after I bang away at the problem for a whole semester. But I'd like to offer a piece of advice: if the words "formula" or "equation" enters into your question then you haven't yet got it down to physics concepts but are still treating the mathematical representation which is case specific.

About your post

First of all the question seems to have changed steadily as you repeatedly edited it. You need to be careful to understand the action of higher rep users in terms of the version(s) they knew about when they took those action.

The most recent version is much closer to a good (for the site) question than the early versions which were both unclear and addressed only the specific example in front of you. Alas the pure number of edits you made works against you: people develop a fatigue about these things; when you post came back to the top of the active queue for the fifth time they sighed and thought "Not that again!" and moved on without even looking at it.

It would also be very helpful to know what you do get. I mean, I'd be temped to offer two different very short answers:

• "Well, draw a free-body diagram for each block already!"
• "Each block is in equilibrium, right? So what does that imply about the forces acting on them?"

But I don't even know if these response would help you because your question is so basic (and the exercise you are working on so oddly stated) that I'm not sure what tools you have at your disposal.

In the most recent addition your post is (imho) either re-openable or close to it because the focus has come be on a procedure for working out the tension which is actually a fairly general thing. I'm not going to vote on it because as a moderator my single vote is binding and it is desirable to have the community weight in.

Answer 2

The problem is not that you are a 10th grade student. Unfortunately, there are too many physics experts on this site that have forgotten that they weren't born knowing all that stuff either. Too often I see simple questions get closed because they are simple. There is also a somewhat religious aversion to homework problems here. I see the point, and I too vote to close those question that simply dump a homework problem on us here. But, helping someone work thru a contrived problem, as long as they are trying within the apparent limits of their knowledge, should be part of the function of this site. However, all that is somewhat of a digression.

The problem in this particular case is that your question was crap. This is not about the content, but the way the question was written and the problem explained. Unfortunately, all too often teachers will give you leeway in formatting, presentation quality, clarity, and overall neatness. This is doing you a disservice, since the real world gives no such leeway.

You may think, what does it matter how it looks as long it says what it needs to say? It may be smudged pencil scrawls, but you can still see what it says. Wrong. Such things are annoying to read, and in some cases take extra time to decipher. You saved yourself a little trouble in writing, but that is at the expense of the reader. Think about what that says, which is "I'm more important than you are.". That's not a smart thing to say to someone you want to get a good grade from, a admissions dean you are trying to impress, someone you hope will hire you, or volunteers you are asking a favor from to help you with your problem on a web site.

Attitude and respect matter. A lot. Nobody wants to help some ingrate who can't even be bothered to write a comprehensible question. Screw that. There is absolutely no excuse for not getting the little things right, like capitalizing the first word of each sentence, capitalizing the word "I", one thought per sentence, and presenting information with the context of the reader in mind.

I just looked at your original question, and your problem was mostly a confused and very poorly thought out presentation of the question. Here is your question interspresed with my thoughts as I'm reading it:

In the question,

Huh? What question. No question has been previously introduced.

a block having mass M is suspended from a fixed support using a wire of length L.

OK, I think I can form a mental picture of this.

Due to the mass M, the an elongation of l is produced in the wire.

"The an"? Really? You think so little of us that you can't even be bothered to proofread what you wrote once?

"Elongation is produced" is awkward and leaves confusion. Is l the additional length the wire is stretched after M is supsended from it compared to its unstretched length? But if so, how does that reconcile with you stating earlier that the length was L. Is L before or after M is suspended?

Now, this mass M is removed,

Now I'm picturing a wire dangling from something.

and a pulley is suspended using the same wire. Assume the mass of the pulley to be negligible. Now two blocks of mass M (M is the same mass as in the first case) are suspended on opposite ends of the pulley. What will be the elongation of the wire in this case?

I think I sortof see this.

Options: A. 4l B. 2l C. l D. l/2

Huh? Oh, these are apparently choices of a multiple choice answer labeled A-D. That was confusing. That would have been much clearer in tabular form.

I have no idea about mechanical advantage and its usage to solve such problems,

What does mechanical advantage have to do with anything? That was never mentioned in the problem and appears to be irrelevant.

nor have I done anything related to pulleys.

So let me get this straight. This question clearly contains a pulley, but yet this guy has done nothing with pulleys!? He hasn't even bothered to look up the basics or read the chapter in his book before asking the question? Does he need us to change his diaper and burp him too? If he'd said the book says xxx, but I don't see how to apply that here because yyy, I'd be all over this trying to help him.

I don't know how to calculate the total mass of the pulley and masses system.

OK, but what has this guy done to try to figure it out? I can't tell what specifically he is stuck on to try to help him past the mental block or misconception. I'm happy to help someone trying to learn, but this ingrate just wants the answer and hasn't even tried to figure anything out himself.

This question is from a competitive test

How on earth is that relevant? Why am I supposed to give a crap where this question came from? Is this supposed to give his question higher priority? Oh, it's from a competitive test (as apposed to what, a uncompetetive test?), so we'll hop to it and get right on that. Yeah, right.

So let's see, confusing writing, no diagram when it is obvious that would be useful, hasn't shown any work, and arrogant attitude. Screw this. Voting to close on account of just being homework dumped on us, and downvoting for good measure as a kick in the butt on the way out the door.

You had one chance to make your first impression, and you blew it by being lazy, sloppy, and therefore arrogant. The question as it stands now (I don't remember seeing the original) is actually somewhat reasonable. If I came across that on its own, I'd probably try to answer. However, now that the history has been pointed out, I don't feel motivated to spend my free time on this particular question. I know the SE system was recently changed so that questions are now "on hold" instead of "closed" initially. But, that's a bunch of PC crap I don't agree with. It makes it seem OK to make a mess first and then be allowed to fix it later. Not on my free time.

Yes, I could vote to reopen it, and it probably deserves it according to the SE rules, but it's my vote and I'm not going to. You need to be taught a lesson that respect, carefully thinking out what you want to say, presentation quality, and attention to detail matter. You seem to think proper writing is something that only applies in English class. Wrong. Not on my free time.

Answer 3

To address your actual question:

What is the meaning of a student of Physics as per this community?

Why does it matter? As far as I know, nowhere in the rules and policies and guidelines of this site, nor anywhere in the discussions here on meta, does it say anything specific to students.

I don't think we've ever bothered to come up with a precise definition of "student" for this community, simply because - as I explained in the previous paragraph - we've never really needed one.

If you really want one, I think the definition dmckee gave in his answer is reasonable:

I take the word to mean any one who is seriously studying the subject.... The key word (in my personal (not moderator powered) opinion) is "seriously". It doesn't mean you have to be an expert, but it does mean you have to be acting as physicist: taking basic concepts and applying them to build a understanding. You should also use the discipline specific vocabulary and the usual techniques in terms of drawing and labeling figures to help you along.

But really, how the community here responds to you depends on the quality of the content you post, not on who you are or what your relationship to physics is (student, teacher, researcher, etc.).

Answer 4

Leaving aside the merits of the original offending question, I do think it is difficult sometimes to gauge the level of explanation someone is looking for.

Many folks on the forum launch into the full gruesome mathematics of a solution, and whilst that may suit a certain fraction of the readership and possibly impress their peers, I can't help thinking that it is often of little use to the OP.

It would be better if those working at undergraduate level and below would identify themselves as such, or indicate in some other way the complexity and depth of the answers being sought. Sometimes it's obvious from the questions being asked, but often it isn't.