My Newtonian physics courses taught projectile motion without really getting into the weeds on how to calculate air resistance. Given how complicated that can b

My Newtonian physics courses taught projectile motion without really getting into the weeds on how to calculate air resistance. Given how complicated that can be and the much greater sophistication of mathematics involved, I think this is a reasonable choice. I don't think anybody walked out of those lectures believing that air resistance doesn't exist. Models, in my obviously limited experience, have the potential to be incredibly useful instructional tools. You can start with the unrealistic assumptions that are literally never true to get the basic points across, and then bring it stepwise closer to reality from them. Starting people off with the fluid dynamics to calculate air resistance reasonably accurately in projectile motion seems like it might make teaching Newtonian physics almost intractably difficult. On top of requiring a much more advanced understanding of mathematics than one can universally assume a college freshman is possessed of.