> I have it on good authority that this is still going on
Do you mean making simplifying assumptions to make a problem tractable? Of course it’s still going on. It has to be, otherwise you just cannot do anything.
> Assume the penguin's beak is a cone
It is impossible to consider the true shape of a penguin’s beak for several reasons:
- you’d need to go all the way down to the electron clouds of the atoms of the beak, at which point the very concept of shape is shaky
- every penguin has a different beak so even if you describe perfectly one of them, it does not necessarily make your calculation more realistic in general.
There is a spectrum of approximations one can make, but a cone is a sensible shape at a first order. It’s also simple enough that students can actually do it without years of experience and very advanced tools.
What do you think they should do instead?
Do you mean making simplifying assumptions to make a problem tractable? Of course it’s still going on. It has to be, otherwise you just cannot do anything.
> Assume the penguin's beak is a cone
It is impossible to consider the true shape of a penguin’s beak for several reasons:
- you’d need to go all the way down to the electron clouds of the atoms of the beak, at which point the very concept of shape is shaky
- every penguin has a different beak so even if you describe perfectly one of them, it does not necessarily make your calculation more realistic in general.
There is a spectrum of approximations one can make, but a cone is a sensible shape at a first order. It’s also simple enough that students can actually do it without years of experience and very advanced tools.
What do you think they should do instead?