I certainly don't mean to imply that learning science is easy, and teaching it is even harder. And it's of course necessary to have some kind of index so that you can figure out what effects are relevant to the physical phenomenon you're interested in, whether that's fridge magnets, towel absorption, sugar dissolution, opacity and transparency, or firework colors, so that you can go do some scholarship on what is already known about those effects.
A jumping-off point, however, would need to have links to further information. If you're interested in fridge magnets, you'll want to know not only about the ferromagnetism of the refrigerator but also the ferrimagnetism of the magnets, Halbach arrays, and magnetic field viewing film (or at least iron filings on paper). If you want to make fridge magnets, as opposed to just gluing them to things, you'll probably want to know about filled composite polymer systems (which are why you can cut fridge magnets with scissors), permeability, degaussing, coercivity, saturation remanence, and the Curie temperature. Making fridge magnets would probably give you deep enough knowledge to know that the theory isn't total Deepak Chopra bullshit, but maybe not enough to be able to measure saturation remanence and permeability.
But the key and principal point here is that science is not a body of facts like the coercivity of strontium ferrite. Science is a way of finding things out, and that way is precisely the opposite extreme from accepting without question what a magazine article says, even if it uses scientific words like, "Permanent magnets, working through ferromagnetism, have tiny crystals in their structure aligned so their magnetic fields add together. Fridge magnets incorporate small ferromagnets that enable them to attach to the metal fridge." The scientific or philosophical approach instead is to question those assertions to within an inch of their life, establishing reliable knowledge through reasoning and empirical evidence instead of accepting authoritative opinions as fact. (In this case, the authoritative opinions pack an astounding number of errors into only two sentences: fridge magnets are typically ferrimagnetic rather than ferromagnetic, it is not sufficient for the fridge to be metal, and magnetic domains are not crystals.)
And that's what it's most important to teach: not the particular facts that have been found so far, but the practice of questioning authority and reasoning critically based on empirical evidence. I mean, scholarship is nice, but it won't debunk the phlogiston or tell you that there are more than four elements, unless somebody's already done that for you. Even then, it's hit or miss: scholarship can just as easily lead you to believe popular pseudosciences like astrology, or worse, formerly popular pseudosciences like racism.
How would you create a jumping-off point for debunking mistaken authoritative statements with reasoning and empirical evidence? This article could barely be farther from being such a thing. I mean, it's full of mistaken authoritative statements, but that only helps the tiny minority of readers who debunk them! Maybe something like The Skeptical Inquirer or some practice in motorcycle maintenance, for example?
To some extent, though, reading material is crippled in its ability to teach people to investigate things scientifically instead of from reading material, because the medium undermines the message. "Atheist" communities, for example, seem to fall into the trap of just accepting different authoritative statements as fact; witness, for example, jhgb's embarrassing inability in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28337805 to understand that mercury distillation was pioneered by ayurvedic doctors, because they class ayurveda as "pseudoscience", which of course it is.
A jumping-off point, however, would need to have links to further information. If you're interested in fridge magnets, you'll want to know not only about the ferromagnetism of the refrigerator but also the ferrimagnetism of the magnets, Halbach arrays, and magnetic field viewing film (or at least iron filings on paper). If you want to make fridge magnets, as opposed to just gluing them to things, you'll probably want to know about filled composite polymer systems (which are why you can cut fridge magnets with scissors), permeability, degaussing, coercivity, saturation remanence, and the Curie temperature. Making fridge magnets would probably give you deep enough knowledge to know that the theory isn't total Deepak Chopra bullshit, but maybe not enough to be able to measure saturation remanence and permeability.
But the key and principal point here is that science is not a body of facts like the coercivity of strontium ferrite. Science is a way of finding things out, and that way is precisely the opposite extreme from accepting without question what a magazine article says, even if it uses scientific words like, "Permanent magnets, working through ferromagnetism, have tiny crystals in their structure aligned so their magnetic fields add together. Fridge magnets incorporate small ferromagnets that enable them to attach to the metal fridge." The scientific or philosophical approach instead is to question those assertions to within an inch of their life, establishing reliable knowledge through reasoning and empirical evidence instead of accepting authoritative opinions as fact. (In this case, the authoritative opinions pack an astounding number of errors into only two sentences: fridge magnets are typically ferrimagnetic rather than ferromagnetic, it is not sufficient for the fridge to be metal, and magnetic domains are not crystals.)
And that's what it's most important to teach: not the particular facts that have been found so far, but the practice of questioning authority and reasoning critically based on empirical evidence. I mean, scholarship is nice, but it won't debunk the phlogiston or tell you that there are more than four elements, unless somebody's already done that for you. Even then, it's hit or miss: scholarship can just as easily lead you to believe popular pseudosciences like astrology, or worse, formerly popular pseudosciences like racism.
How would you create a jumping-off point for debunking mistaken authoritative statements with reasoning and empirical evidence? This article could barely be farther from being such a thing. I mean, it's full of mistaken authoritative statements, but that only helps the tiny minority of readers who debunk them! Maybe something like The Skeptical Inquirer or some practice in motorcycle maintenance, for example?
To some extent, though, reading material is crippled in its ability to teach people to investigate things scientifically instead of from reading material, because the medium undermines the message. "Atheist" communities, for example, seem to fall into the trap of just accepting different authoritative statements as fact; witness, for example, jhgb's embarrassing inability in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28337805 to understand that mercury distillation was pioneered by ayurvedic doctors, because they class ayurveda as "pseudoscience", which of course it is.