Actually, my latest flame didn't mention math or math education at all. These "science" books are not only devoid of math, they are devoid of *numbers*. They deprive the student of any sense of dimension or scale, even relative. "My" 8th grader and his high school brother found it highly plausible, rather than hilarious, when a cinematic murderous snowman explained his makeup as "genetically altered water". It seems to me that the most glaring ommission from early science education is the notion of dimensioned quantity. How old must you be to understand the difference between a kilowatt and a kilowatt hour? With weights and calibrated balance sticks you could demonstrate even to second graders that Nature multiplies and divides, yet not digitally. Properly built toy cars could demonstrate how momentum and energy scale with mass and velocity, and flexible plastic beams could demonstrate how stiffness and breaking strength scale similarly with breadth, and differently with thickness. And thus how a crack running lengthwise inside a tree limb can lead to it breaking crosswise. Some kids, at least until school destroys it, have "quantitative curiosity". Following are some exercises I proposed in an off-list discussion. How big is a cell, an atom, the moon? Would the moon's orbit fit inside the Sun? Which is faster, the speed of light, or one billion mph? How much would you need to enlarge a grain of salt so its atoms were as large as grains of salt? Suppose one of the atoms was a wayward uranium atom that spontaneously fissioned. Would the mc^2 be enough to raise the grain its own diameter against Earth gravity? The intensity of sunlight hitting Earth is one kilowatt per square meter. What is the total wattage of the sun? If everyone on Earth jumped into the Grand Canyon, would they fit? "Miles per gallon" has the same units as "per acre". What is the physical significance of this (tiny) area? If a block of polyethylene the size of the Moffett blimp hangar were all one molecule, could it stretch to the moon? The Andromeda Galaxy? Everybody should witness this chestnut: Draw a horizontal line on the board about 10 ft long, maybe with vertical ticks on the ends. Tell the class this represents one billion. Ask someone fairly bright to come up and mark off one million. Of course, for the geeks we have: What's the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight? Could that guy who'd walk a mile for a Camel plod a picoparsec for a Pall Mall? Scrooge McDuck's money bin is said to contain three cubic acres. How much is that in square gallons? Lest you find six-dimensional money frivolous, meet nine dimensional pollution: In a Greepeace magazine I saw a photo of a vandalized sewer pipe with a caption crowing that before their sabotage, it had carried "thousands of cubic liters" of pharmaceutical waste to the ocean. We are graduating generations of "science" students who are defenseless against these innumerate morons peddling instant personal validation. --rwg