<p>Whoops, didn’t mean partials, meant chain rule.</p>
<p>(And I’m sure rocket would prefer everything to be taught in vector notation so you’d wind up with grads and crap I don’t remember going on anyway. ;))</p>
<p>Scalar components are fine… but my point was that many of us memorize these formulas (hell, “laws” sometimes) and we don’t even really know their limitations. F=ma was just an example of something we are fed from day 1 though is incomplete and 90% of students don’t find out otherwise because they take it for face value.</p>
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<p>90% of students who take high school physics don’t <em>need</em> to know anything other than the fact that there’s a direct relationship between a mass, its acceleration, and the resulting force that it may apply to something. They don’t need to know the formulas’ limitations; they need to know that when a Hummer hits their Prius it’ll do a lot more damage than if a SmartCar hits their Prius, and that if they’re going faster, the accident will be worse. We learn about the formulas’ limitations when we finally need to recognize that it <em>has</em> limitations, when those limitations actually have <em>meaning</em> to us. </p>
<p>There are plenty of axes to grind with regard to science education; I really don’t think that this needs to be one of them…</p>
<p>Aibarr, I was actually referring to basic college physics. However, your point is noted.</p>