> I start from a place of extreme skepticism that gnaws at me even as I watch myself being proved wrong. I had the same kind of issues: I thought that energy s

> I start from a place of extreme skepticism that gnaws at me even as I watch myself being proved wrong. I had the same kind of issues: I thought that energy should be E=mv, not E=1/2m*v^2. The latter seemed really baroque. I set up a ballistic pendulum trying to demonstrate my idea. I finally got it when I was thinking about how if you accelerate a projectile, the force has to be applied over more distance per unit time to achieve the same acceleration, so the amount of work being done goes up quadratically. Even then, I was annoyed that "the" kinetic energy wasn't a unique value -- it depends on the velocity, which depends on your frame of reference. I finally got over that one when I realized that the kinetic energy in a collision is uniquely defined b/c of the center-of-mass frame. In graduate stat mech, I basically got lost at the point where the prof said we're supposed to assume that every point in phase space is equally likely -- how the hell should we know that?!? It wasn't until I read the Bayesian derivation by Jaynes, based on Galilean invariance & entropy maximization as a form of being unbiased, that I finally got it - years after I squeaked by with a B in the class. Relativity -- same deal, the time dilation / length contraction stuff seemed really contrived with all the little square root factors that drop out at low velocities. I finally started to get it when I saw someone write it all in terms of geometry instead of algebra. QM -- can't say that I grok it yet, but I think I'm in good company on that front. One thing I worry about is that physicists have gotten so good at accepting initially-counterintuitive concepts, that it's gotten to be a badge of honor. I think it's always better to find a way to make the concepts intuitive. Maybe quantum physics cannot ever be made intuitive, but I think we should keep trying to find better ways to understand it instead of gatekeeping the profession by whether people can stomach the Copenhagen interpretation of QM. >overwhelmed by all the possible things I would need to factor in. I experienced that too. I made peace with it eventually, by accepting that it's a trade-off. Often times it doesn't make a big difference in the result, but it does make a big difference in how easy it is to understand what's going on (and to solve the math problems). It's generally better to work with the oversimplified problem first, and then you can test changes afterwards to see if they matter.