Blog post: swansont: Within Epsilon of the Truth

Excellent Approximations and Lying to Children

The post on which this comment is based seems to propose doing things the hard way — why teach non-Euclidean geometry without having the foundation in Euclidean geometry. Do you really want to teach that kinetic energy is $latex (gamma -1)mc^2$ and, perhaps more importantly, do you want to derive how you got that, rather than going with the Newtonian approximation that's going to hold as long as you are limited to everyday speeds?

Physics curricula aren't perfect — I think e.g. the Bohr model can do more harm than good — but then again that's not really an example of a model that's approximately correct. The suggestion that we abandon teaching classical physics and instead we dive into quantum and relativistic topics (starting with lasers at Eight O'clock on day 1) means explaining the details while simultaneously trying to get across basic ideas like forces and energy. I think that's a lot to ask a student to digest. Read and comment on the full post