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SALT LAKE CITY — Do you remember what you learned in high school physics? Velocity, kinetic energy, rotation, acceleration and all those equations upon equations. For some it's complicated and difficult, but from the perspective of modern science, it's all incredibly, incredibly old.
How old? Henry Reich, the creator and main contributor to the popular YouTube series "MinutePhysics" points out that most high school physics courses in the U.S. don't require students to learn any physics discovered after 1865 at the latest.
Reich, whose series has accumulated some 45 million views and the admiration of both physicists and lay physics enthusiasts, think's that's crazy. He created a video entitled "Open Letter to the President: Physics Education," arguing that our children probably ought to be learning about things as basic as how light works or how an atom is structured. Right now they aren't getting that.
"Imagine if Biology classes didn't talk about DNA, or hormones, or cell reproduction, or the modern germ theory of disease or ecology," he says.
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Reich wants that to change all that and bring modern science into modern science classrooms. He argues that the developments of the last century ought to form the building blocks for educating the scientists and engineers of the next century, rather than narrowly focusing on important but older concepts. Basically, they physics of the last century are not as hard to teach students as we think they are.
The letter is addressed to the new President largely because he appoints the Secretary of Education and influence education policy, Reich argues. Given the influence that President Bush had on education policy with No Child Left Behind, he is perhaps not far off.
"Between you and me, Mr. President, I think we ought to start making physics education more awesome here in the U.S. Otherwise, the next Carl Sagan or Richard Feynman will come from somewhere with more educational foresight," he said.
