The Twilight of Liberal Credentialism

Newtonian physics is often represented by the action of pool cues on billiard balls, a relatively easy case. The cue, a powerful tool, transmits force to a movable object, which then transmits it to others. Virtually the entirety of the problem can be understood as a puzzle about predicting the final positions of the balls. A high-school math or physics homework assignment never ends up with the cue breaking against the shock of an implacable sphere, maybe shattering to its wooden shards or even bloodying the hands of its wielder.