The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. T he government has developed a high-school course called Principles of Technology. It uses engineering problems to teach physics. Teachers show live problems to the class and then suggest the underlying physics. The program seems to work.
Students come out knowing a great deal.
Still, the course has critics. The students don't know formal math. Teachers can't use the language of science. For example, suppose I say that electricity flows in wires the way water flows in pipes. That's very clear, but it's only true when the pipe flow is laminar.