I think this essay applies to most of the sciences (perhaps excluding physics), in part because it is really hard to test whether a student was amazed by a part

I think this essay applies to most of the sciences (perhaps excluding physics), in part because it is really hard to test whether a student was amazed by a particular insight, and much easier to test facts. Biology is amazing. Every cell has the same DNA, and in humans, that DNA is several meters long. In a cell that is 25-ish microns in diameter! But chemistry is amazing too - how do all those air molecules become uniformly distributed in a volume? How did Avagadro figure out that number? The problem with teaching science is that the amazing stuff that is accessible to a high-school student was figured out 100 - 400 years ago, and we’ve learned a lot since. And for biology and chemistry, there are all those details. (I guess math might be worse, since we teach things that have been understood for thousands of years, but at least the old stuff is obviously useful.) I think it’s really hard to teach and test on the exciting stuff. What’s exciting to me may be “who cares” to the next person. But it’s great when it works.