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From: Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>Well I would say the Newtonian equations we teach and use ARE wrong since
Newtonian mechanics is not wrong. There are many applications in
which one can produce a Newtonian solution and a relativistic
quantum mechanical approach can't even get off the ground. If you
drive a car such applications abound in your immediate vicinity.
Under no circumstances should you denigrate Newtonian mechanics
when discussing it with your students. Man could not have got to
the Moon without it!
Above all, never denigrate anything solely because it is "not the
most current model". One need only look at the succession of
elementary particle models we've had over the last fifty years to
see the ultimate folly in that attitude. I think that cosmology
provides even more dramatic examples. Just because some thing is
New! doesn't guarantee it is Improved! It doesn't even work for
laundry soap.