Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
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I don't disagree that we need more science and math literacy.
The problem is that for most terrestrial problems relativity and quantum mechanics don't add to accuracy and make solutions much more difficult. I did some basic checks and I think time dilation at highway speeds is on the order of a ten billionth of a percent. Similar is true for quantum effects at with any scale we can see with our eyes at and at temperatures/energies naturally found on Earth.
To actually learn these subjects, the math tools build upon each other and take time. It would be difficult to get kids to the required competency in linear algebra, real and complex analysis, probability theory, and differential equations before undergraduate. Special relativity and very basic QM are the only things advanced high school students could work with in a meaningful way. And at that point, it is hard to justify we are teaching what we know now given QED, QCD, MHD, and so on.
The article seems to talk about exposing kids to pop science rather than teaching them the real thing - which seems like a great idea to me. But learning general relativity isn't learning about general relativity.
While solving this part of the STEM issue, someone should tackle the adjunct faculty pay crisis, so there are qualified experts available to teach these subjects earning more than $15/hr!
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Similar is true for quantum effects at any scale we can see with our eyes
I don't disagree with anything in your post but wanted to point out a fun area where the human eye is able to see a quantum effect. If you wander into a Costco (or any other TV store) you might see an LCD Samsung TV that mentions QLED as a selling point. Turns out they are using quantum dots as phosphors.
As everyone knows, a combination of red, green and blue light can be used to make any other color (OK, black is a challenge for TVs but I won't tackle that here). Modern TVs start with blue light and then use phosphors to convert the blue light into red and green. The challenge is to have very pure reds (i.e. monochromatic) and very pure greens, so your orange doesn't look purplish.
Those of you who took a quantum mechanics class remember dealing with the "particle in a box" problem. If you constrain an electron into a small enough box it no longer has flexibility in its energy levels. The wave-nature of the electron senses the boundaries of the box and says, "I need to have nodes at both ends of the box, so I can have a 1/2 wavelength, or one, or two, or 10, but never 2.4 wavelengths inside this box". If the box is big enough the electron doesn't sense the walls and can take on all the the wavelengths required for an arbitrary energy level. By making nanoparticles with well-defined sizes you can force the electrons in the particle to absorb a blue photon and only emit red photons, or with another size particle only emit green photons. Thus the manufacturing challenge becomes a sizing problem rather than a materials problem.
So you are "seeing" the wave-nature of the electron in action when you see those vivid colors of the Samsung LCD display. Kinda cool!
Rgds,
HH/Sean
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You can could a similar point that a visible quantum effect is that we aren't all evaporated into component particles by infinite blackbody radiation, too :)
That is amazing explanation of quantum dot dislay tech and I learned new things, thank you.
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I also learned somewhat chronologically (Newton, Maxwell, Einstein...). But the article is commenting on observed results, and apparently they are -so far- very promising. Obviously, you don't throw tensors at 4th graders. If I understand what they're doing, they are teaching in a descriptive fashion, and saving the math for later when the kids advance enough. Newtonian mechanics are kinda boring compared to Einstein. Yeah, you can predict dropping balls and such, but black holes are cooler. ;-)
