> [things]...impossible to do at the high school level without handwaving away most of the details. Something about my dad's generation is that I observed them

> [things]...impossible to do at the high school level without handwaving away most of the details. Something about my dad's generation is that I observed them to be more ready to resort to workbench tinkering to get over patches where their math gave out. Following your point, maybe this results from their early experiences of aiming beyond their math capabilities.