From Georgia's Benchmarks for Science Literacy, "The general idea of universal gravitation and how weak it is compared to other kinds of forces is sufficient. Working out numerical problems adds little and is very likely to leave many students behind. The math is not hard but the units are baffling." All Georgia students will be left behind when it comes to numerical problems in science!

From our state adopted Georgia Science Standards, "Work, in the specialized sense used in physics, is often considered a useful, even necessary, concept for dealing with ideas of energy. These benchmarks propose to do without a technical definition of work for purposes of basic literacy, because it is so greatly confused with the common English-language meaning of the word. The calculation of work as force times distance 
is not essential to understanding many important ideas about energy. Running makes you tired; rubbing your hands together makes them warmer; coming out of water makes you feel cool. Older students can grasp these ideas in a general way, but even they should not be expected to understand them deeply." Really???? How are we going to prepare American engineers and scientists with these standards???

An excerpt from our current Georgia science standards "A great deal of work is required for students to make the distinction successfully, and the heat/temperature distinction may join mass/weight, speed/acceleration, and power/energy distinctions as topics that, for purposes of literacy, are not worth the extraordinary time required to learn them." I disagree! Do you agree with this? If not, now is the time to say something. Watch for Common Core science standards, aka Next Generation Science Standards being adopted under another name as the State BOE is now revising them. Can they get any worse than what we already have? We will be watching.