As someone who was a math and physics major at one point, that's what I consider the biggest missed opportunity in physics education. I was always taught physics as a set of theorems that you apply to some set of random problems. Zero effort given to the context, actual applications, and physical insight.
That kind of put me off physics, and I've been longing ever since for someone to build a course that essentially covers physics historically, starting from the problems physics helped us solve, and that puts modelling and experiment at the center, instead of just teaching recipes.
I feel the like incredibly common idea that all applications derive from theory might be one of the must harmful misconception in education.
I believe every person who is allowed to work in a quantum field (heh) should have been able to run at least a trivial quantum experiment.
That is, Scott Aaronson should go sit in some collaborator's lab and set up all the apparatus and analyze all the data, before he gets to spew about "quantum" to the general public. This should also apply to any theoretical physicist- I would love to see String Theorists in a lab setting up a michaelson morley experiment.
That kind of put me off physics, and I've been longing ever since for someone to build a course that essentially covers physics historically, starting from the problems physics helped us solve, and that puts modelling and experiment at the center, instead of just teaching recipes.
I feel the like incredibly common idea that all applications derive from theory might be one of the must harmful misconception in education.