Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead
Always struggling to find some mental imagery that 'the man on the street' might connect with...
Wonder if public education might ever mention the relationship between Cd and the power vs velocity-cubed law to graduating seniors in high school?
|
No, because we're primarily wired as social creatures, with a subordinate ability to understand physics. The reason society kills the scientists and philosophers is because they dared mention that facts don't care about your feelings.
We would have to find the genes responsible for taking an interest in how things work, probably at the expense of having an interest in social norms and roles, and genetically engineer humans with a disposition towards those attributes. Probably a recipe for disaster, as time has selected humans to generally be interested in social networks over comprehending the nature of reality.
The imagery I think would be helpful is to show how many horses (horsepower) it takes to maintain 75 MPH for any given vehicle. Just draw each vehicle as a chariot, with the equivalent number of horses needed pulling it along.
Maybe portray the battery capacity as an equivalent number of bushels of hay needed to feed the horses.
... someone once left the oven door open on a winter day after baking, saying her mom taught her that trick to utilize the heat. I asked her where she thought the heat went if you don't let it out. She has a masters degree in science, and I almost failed high school.