As a high school freshman in 1979, our introductory physics class was only nominally about physics. It was really about “how to do science”. We did lots of exp

As a high school freshman in 1979, our introductory physics class was only nominally about physics. It was really about “how to do science”. We did lots of experiments, made lots of charts, did lots of curve fitting, and for the first few months were required to use a slide rule instead of a calculator. This was explicitly because (a) we would have to track the magnitudes ourselves and would develop the ability to “sanity check”, and (b) we would be forced to keep our calculations within the same realm of precision as our measurements (mostly made with a ruler). For me, those were valuable and persistent lessons. There may be a better way to teach them today, but it worked well back then!