They're used to dealing with bad transportation and roads, no or spotty electricity, using pit latrines and poor medical care. Those problems are being worked on and are showing improvement. [Fermi problem: what would it cost to take say, Tanzania, and give it a complete first world infrastructure; highways, paved local roads, sewage treatment, electricity, water, trash pickup?] Does that mean you think that the rapid expansion of cell networks in Africa and the resulting connectivity is wasted or shouldn't have been done? Third world residents deserve access to the modern world and broadband is part of that.

As a Peace Corps volunteer in 1999 the internet (very slow shared connection) was 2 days away and cost 1$/hour. Now it's a couple of hours away from where I lived, half the price and 10x faster. That needs to keep expanding. I tried explaining what the internet was to a rural friend. He had *seen* a phone once 10 years ago. Now he has one. The internet needs to go that way. People deserve access to information. Hey, maybe they'll start to figure out some of the solutions to their problems themselves instead of relying on people to tell them what to do.

[5 years in the Peace Corps in rural West & East Africa.]

The University of Colorado also has something called PhET which is a different collection of applets for physics, biology, chem, earth science and math. The physics goes up to basic quantum.

I see now it does cover thermo and does seem to be Cal state standards compliant. I've run into your books before and I like them more than the lesser-of-evils textbook I ended up with. I've thought about trying to use it in class but for the reasons outlined above it's just not going to (officially) happen. I'll probably steal some of your problems though :).

As a California high school physics teacher I agree that your text will never be adopted by a public California high school. You have a picture of a beer for one, obviously encouraging underaged drinking. Plus it's not aligned to the state standards (you're missing thermo). Also every physics teacher has to agree on a single textbook in case a physics student transfers mid-year. That hasn't happened in the 4 years I've been teaching here so why we're catering to the random data point is beyond me. But the standards are the main problem. You see, the school board has to ensure that the book meets the state standards. They're not going to actually read the standards and the book and see if they match up (and they're really not qualified to determine that). But the major publishers also publish helpful guides that link all the standards to specific pages in the text so all the board members have to do is look at the guide and say "Yup, it's standards complient" or more precisely verify the existence of such a guide and deem that necessary and sufficient. Since you don't have such a guide the board can not legally adopt your text. I'm pretty sure the picture of a beer would prevent me from even getting it approved as a supplementary text (were I to ask rather than just use it.)

I don't know what article you're reading but the one linked in the summary says nothing about the median salary of a teacher. The number $74,000/yr, which I assume you pulled out of your ass, is about $30,000/yr inflated over the actual value. Sure, after 30 years of teaching I'd be making that much, but not in my mid-30s.

Could you provide a little more info on the Sterling engine from a bike wheel and rubber bands? I'm a high school physics teacher (done most of what you mention) and I've tried two different hand made Sterling engine models, including the one from Make magazine two years ago or so. Couldn't get either one even close to working.

Yeah, I realize 20 years makes the memory a little hazy.

The older generation doesn't know they want it. My parents (~70 years old) resisted dumping AOL dial-up until they were more or less pushed into getting broadband. Now both of them have discovered all the high bandwidth stuff on the web that they actually like and want to watch like videos on gardening or quilting. They don't use it much to communicate, they're not on facebook or twitter, they use the internet for finding information they want and now really appreciate the bandwidth. With dial-up finding what they wanted was just too painful so the percieved value was very low.