> No, we talk about friction and pulleys. And that poorly. Amontons' laws of friction for objects greased with pig fat. We now understand friction down to na

> No, we talk about friction and pulleys. And that poorly. Amontons' laws of friction for objects greased with pig fat. We now understand friction down to nanoscale for a broad range of materials and conditions. But we don't teach any of that. After all, why bother? Even nanoscale. A sense of scale, of the physical sizes of things, is thought foundationally important. It's part of every undergraduate curriculum in the sciences and engineering. And often high-school. But it's not then used by subsequent content, so there's little selection pressure to teach it successfully. And so we don't. If you ask graduate students at a first-tier medical school "how big are red blood cells?", don't be surprised by the baffled innumeracy of "really really small". So yes, topic selection in science education is problematic. But simply tweaking the topic list... there's no shortage of such "physics for jocks and poets" efforts. And quite a few "physics emphasizing biology" courses. They too are less than wonderfully successful.