But honestly, I could care less about waves and stuff. Physics is astoundingly boring. I just don't care. I find the ultimate results of current astrophysical and cosmological research interesting from a conceptual point of view, but only in 1-5 paragraph tidbits.
At a rather basic level, I think some people find that stuff interesting, and some people don't. The key to good science education has to take this into account, and as bad as it sounds, I think it has to separate them into two different tracks as soon as possible, so that the people who could care less about "real" science are introduced to the kind of stuff that can lead them to appreciate the method and practice of science in a very general way, even if basic algebra is a challenge.
Sadly, though, as science is usually taught by science-types, and amongst science types a rather common attitude is "If you don't find this interesting, than you're a hopeless dolt," it's really not surprising that many people will reject it entirely.
You go from the macro to the micro to the nano... go sub atomic. You don't need to get the maths to appreciate how absolutely incredible it is that all these different factors come together and that we actually exist.
We exist, it's amazing! I'm made up of proteins and other macromolecules, with enzymes doing their various jobs, bacteria living in me, without which, I would die. I eat food, drink water, breathe the air, all of this is chemistry, biology and incredibly fine tuned to keep me alive.
If anything significant had altered the path of human history or evolution, or a random clash of primordial soup had formed something else or the energy had escaped and gone elsewhere, this planet may not be here, humans and cats and dogs and sheep wouldn't be here. If the mitochondria hadn't quite pulled it off or the DNA mutated in the wrong place a million years ago...
Oh the probability threads, how tenuous they become when you look at everything that could have happened and then see what did.
And all these millions, billions of proteins and molecules that I'm made up from, somehow are sitting in exactly the right place for me to function and live; these are made from atoms, with electrons and protons and neutrons all these funnily named sub atomic things, that whizz about and it's only probability that puts them in a point in space at any one time with their complex energy levels and empty space.
So much space, how am I even solid? Do I really exist the way I think I do? I'm pure energy.
We are made from space dust!
Tell me that is not amazing. Physics is not boring really, but it's a damn shame that they don't start the story with the narrative that we know nothing at all and how did this world become what it is? And then bit by bit, unpick and discover and test and fail and learn and be inspired.
Science is a great big adventure to explore the world with so let's go and discover... Ad astra per aspera
I find that understanding science makes the day to day alone, awe inspiring. But I'm not sure that is entirely true for the non scientist. A rainbow perhaps yes, or other phenomena that you don't see often. But ripples, blue sky etc - do people try to look further than what they purely observe, is it taken on board that there's something sciencey behind all that? Or does it just need pointing out?
I found that the more layers of complexity that I uncovered, the more amazing all the really simple things became. Ad astra per aspera
A poet once said "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imaginations adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secret of the universe's age, and the evolution of the stars. What strange array of chemicals are there in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts -- physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern -- of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
But the actual, math-laden practice of physics? Taking measurements and plugging them into equations? Bleah.
Yet, the really advanced stuff cannot really be properly understood any other way, as it is so beyond the normal realm of perception or experience. Quantum stuff is just strange. I can listen to explanations of it, but I do so in a manner that I might listen to a creation myth - I can see sub-atomic particles no better than I can see gods, and although one most definitely has a very important and profound influence on my very existence and on the existence of all matter, those actions are as completely invisible and imperceptible to the unaided eye as are the acts of mythological entities.
Now, if I were the sort of person who really got math, I could actually come to understand advanced physics on a real level, or at least as well as anyone out there does. But I'm not, and I'm hardly alone. It will always be something that I just have to take on faith.
Whether this is the cause or the effect of my disinterest I cannot say, but in any case, the problems of physics are not the ones that really interest me. I feel just fine taking the workings of the physical world for granted. What interests me is society, and how social groups work. Given that physical reality is, at the level I can percieve, pretty much the same for me as it is for anyone else on Earth, it's more the background against which we work than the substance of the problem that interests me.
If I may offer a suggestion, the next time you're in a bookstore see if they have a copy of Morris Kline's Mathematics for the Non-Mathematician, thumb through it, and see if floats your boat. It's a history of math from a Humanities POV. It was written as a textbook for college students who had primary interests other than math/techie/science. At 500 pages it's a bit of a slog but there's no reason not to skip around to find the bits one finds interesting.
What you find utterly fascinating is unknown to 75% of humanity(Category A); 15% think it is useless, boring, tedious, and dull (Category B); 9% actively despise it and hate the practitioners thereof (Category C); .999999999999999% admit it might have some use, some day and immediately tell you a long, pointless, anecdote (Category D); .000000000000001% are slightly interested (Category E). Corollary I: 98% of the people you meet in daily life will be Category C. Corollary II: Anytime you talk to people in Categories A, B, D, or E about your Disciplinary Entrancement they will immediately morph into Category C.
What you find utterly fascinating is unknown to 75% of humanity(Category A); 15% think it is useless, boring, tedious, and dull (Category B); 9% actively despise it and hate the practitioners thereof (Category C); .999999999999999% admit it might have some use, some day and immediately tell you a long, pointless, anecdote (Category D); .000000000000001% are slightly interested (Category E).
