Uhh... as much as I love physics and everything, we really don't need to teach this kind of stuff to most students. If you're not even taking AP physics (or some extracurricular physics) than you're probably not going to be doing anything that requires relativity or quantum physics. Heck, most students who are taking AP classes probably will never need to use relativity and only a handful of people probably ever have to use quantum mechanics in any meaningful way.

Some people are saying that if we don't teach these kinds of things in the standard high school curriculum then the next generation of physicists won't ever get interested in physics. I think that's a load. In this day and age information is so freely available that anyone who was remotely curious about the subject would have done some sort of research on it. I never even took high school physics and I was still able to be curious about physics and check out a book or two from the library.

I think that videos like this are just another manifestation of the faux nerd trend. Faux nerds dismiss people who don't conspicuously consume every fact they can find as being inferior and uncultured in order to hide the fact that they (like most human beings) don't actually find every single branch of knowledge endlessly fascinating.

Good luck with that, first you have to get it past the evangelicals and objectivists (randoids).

"Quantum Mechanics ... refutes causality, light waves refute logic, relativity refutes common sense, thermodynamics refutes hope" - Leonard Peikoff

:(

re: #1 jogiff

Uhh... as much as I love physics and everything, we really don't need to teach this kind of stuff to most students. If you're not even taking AP physics (or some extracurricular physics) than you're probably not going to be doing anything that requires relativity or quantum physics. Heck, most students who are taking AP classes probably will never need to use relativity and only a handful of people probably ever have to use quantum mechanics in any meaningful way.

Some people are saying that if we don't teach these kinds of things in the standard high school curriculum then the next generation of physicists won't ever get interested in physics. I think that's a load. In this day and age information is so freely available that anyone who was remotely curious about the subject would have done some sort of research on it. I never even took high school physics and I was still able to be curious about physics and check out a book or two from the library.

I think that videos like this are just another manifestation of the faux nerd trend. Faux nerds dismiss people who don't conspicuously consume every fact they can find as being inferior and uncultured in order to hide the fact that they (like most human beings) don't actually find every single branch of knowledge endlessly fascinating.

Really? A basic understanding of semiconductors is too advanced in your view? Good lord.