[Tommy]

Caution: Serious thoughts follow. If you're looking for entertainment, skip to the next post.

While it is amusing to watch other people damage things through their lack of understanding of science, it's a little sad that so very many people today can only discover if something will work by trying it until it either works or fails. I've tried to interest school age kids in science by explaining that an understanding of things like chemistry and Newtonian physics provides something most people would give anything to have - the ability to accurately predict the future. For example, anyone with even a modest understanding of the physics of motion and traction would never stand on the outside of a sharp corner at a World Rally Championship race. Yet again and again I see videos of people getting run over by cars that couldn't make a turn. If we could get more people to understand simple things like the difference in strenght between a steel car frame and a plastic car bumper, there would be a lot fewer funny videos, and a lot fewer people making trips to the emergency room. Sadly, I think my efforts to encourage kids to study science have been overcome by the poor quality of science being taught by the science deficient teachers in most of our public schools. We can't expect teachers who don't actually understand science to do a good job of motivating students to want to learn it.