I was also on the science/rebellious side, which was really cool learning since of course ~80-90% of the things I disputed I was wrong, which only made me learn

I was also on the science/rebellious side, which was really cool learning since of course ~80-90% of the things I disputed I was wrong, which only made me learn and be more motivated! I built my model of why I thought something was not correct, if I thought it was strong enough I'll ask some key questions and then I'd learn about it. I don't fully agree with no simplification though, but I agree your teacher reaction was wrong. I think saying something like "yes, there are more states, but these are the ones commonly found in nature" would be the best. I've taught programming, and for example in Javascript I would just teach that there is a type that is Number. But I wouldn't go into detail between int, float, different bases, etc since it doesn't make sense in a really basic level when general knowledge is more important. At points some people would ask me more advanced or old-school questions, like table layouts, then I would acknowledge those exist but there are better alternatives nowadays and that I would teach that.