... The Play's the Thing: Some Thoughts on Introductory Physics Teaching . ... The problem is that my idea of heaven is becoming a thing of the past, at least in the introductory physics classroom, and I have been working very hard over the past several years to make sure that it remains a thing of the past. ... For the past year or so I've been working on a new approach to teaching introductory algebra-based physics. ... In general, the students show up to lecture and copy down the lecture notes. ...