I had 3 courses of material science at university (30y ago) and back then the theoretical models where nowhere: being within 2 orders of magnitude of reality wa

I had 3 courses of material science at university (30y ago) and back then the theoretical models where nowhere: being within 2 orders of magnitude of reality was already a success. Engineers would just build a big formula with plenty of constants that allowed the formula to fit reality. Last year, my son had a course of material science at university and beforehand he did not believe me about how clueless we humans used to be back then. Turns out nothing has changed.