[pdonis]

> Explaining the structure of an atom without having to explain atomic orbitals and standing waves.

My high school chemistry teacher had no problem explaining this to me, when teaching the periodic table of the elements, without telling any lies and without going into the details of the quantum mechanics involved. The Pauli exclusion principle and a general statement that the details of the quantum mechanics were out of scope for that class was enough.

> Explaining classical mechanics without including a bunch of caveats about relativistic speeds.

My high school physics teacher had no problem explaining classical mechanics including the caveats. The caveats took only a few minutes early in the semester. What's the problem?

[bigger_cheese]

I remember my High School chemistry lesson from the 90's clearly explained we were working with historical models, we talked about nature of the models developments and the experiments that led to them.

We started with the JJ Thomson "plumb pudding model"

Then we learnt about Rutherford and the gold foil experiment which invalidated Thomson's model.

Then we learnt about emission spectrum and the Bohr model which invalidated Rutherford's model.

The whole time it was clear that nothing was "settled" the models were useful at explaining the observed phenomena but were incomplete.

Same thing in physics. We started with debate about nature of light and examined things like lumniferous aether and Michaelson Morley experiment, double slit experiment etc. Then Maxwell and electromagnetism leading to Heinrich Hertz and the photoelectric effect, which led to Planck and Einstein.

I certainly never thought I was being lied to. We were treading along the same path as those who had came before.

[pdonis]

> I certainly never thought I was being lied to.

That's because you weren't. You said:

> The whole time it was clear that nothing was "settled" the models were useful at explaining the observed phenomena but were incomplete.

Which is exactly what I think should be told to students when a simplified model is being taught. But the people I've been responding to are advocating for telling students the simplified model as if it were exactly correct and covered all cases. That is what I am saying is lying.

[djur]

What about earlier than high school? I learned about both of those things much earlier.

[pessimizer]

Why would you explain classical mechanics at all? It's an inaccurate simplification.

[pdonis]

It's much simpler to compute answers with classical mechanics, and the answers are accurate enough for many practical purposes. As the saying goes, all models are wrong but some are useful.

[kortilla]

Classical mechanics covers the vast majority of the interactions in day to day life people will have. There is a reason it’s “classical mechanics”.