These seem more lasting than typical nostalgia:
xkcd: Cosmological Nostalgia Content
Makes me think of north Germany in medieval times: the hot coals under the bed served mostly to keep the chamber pot from freezing over.
Some cousins bought a WWII-era duplex and joked that the other half was for the kids (the separating wall was a dual wall of concrete block, moisture barriers, then two-by-six studs with insulation for a total of two and a half feet of material very poor at conducting sound).
Then how is it detectable?
Theoretical mathematics. That’s the “where will we ever use this?” branch of math that so many junior high and high school students hover around the edges of - as they stare disdainfully at it from just outside of its actual practice. 
By introspection. 
It’s also a common occurrence in theology. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
From “Innocents Abroad,” by Mark Twain (I’m listening to the Audible version):
“I must have a prodigious amount of mind; sometimes it takes as much as a week for me to make mine up.”
Please connect the dots for them! As many times as it takes. I felt like my physics teacher expected me to take more on faith than my pastor.
I could see the forces working in my imagination. So much of it I understood intuitively. But the connection between the math and the reality it was describing was not always clear. And I was a competent math student.
It’s essential to make that connection and the help the kids build a strong connection with the hooks you help them establish. Over and over by many different strategies and in conjunction with other subjects, gee whiz! Even with gym. Without that, you are really only reaching the kids who already get it.
Absolutely! So many of the subjects I hated at school (history, geography, English, biology, physics, etc.) I now find an endless mine of fascinating knowledge nuggets. I wish my teachers had worked harder to win us over.
Thanks for the exhortations and reminders. It is indeed part of my mission as a teacher, yet it helps to hear those encouragements. Of course, in my particular case, part of the challenge is even just persuading students to enroll in the elective advanced science courses (physics) and higher maths in the first pace. I have smaller classes since they don’t need many of those to graduate - which is a blessing and a curse. Curse because there are those who could have handled it, and benefitted from it immensely but chose otherwise because of the work involved, and also a blessing because I then am left (for the most part) only with students who actually want to be there. So part of my efforts are devoted to attracting students even just to come in the door toward engaging with higher challenge toward understanding.
I taught German. I know just what you’re talking about.
An idea:
Maybe there’s something closer to you than Sandusky, Ohio.
Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky (I think about 4 hours from where I live now) has an outstanding (THE BEST I’ve experienced) collection of roller coasters and has days dedicated to physics classes during the year. My physics class never went . Which is unfortunate. I LOVE roller coasters and would have reveled in learning to understand the math that went with the experience.
It could have been a field trip combined with Mr. Williams (Physics), Mr. Regan (my BELOVED algebra/trig teacher), Mr. Boudreau (pre calc), Mr. Davies (Gee-I’m-A-Tree!), and Mr. Waldschmidt (Lit teacher, philosopher and drinking buddy of Mr. Williams’ for sardonic wit). Geez! That would have been a fun field trip. Well, if there were other girls that had gone. Laura Grazulis and I would have been along. I think most of even our more sociable male gearhead friends, though, would have all be gathered around Chris What-is-Name’s HP calculator on the bus.
Never happened, though.
When I was teaching (left in June 2000) Howard Gardner’s work on Multiple Intelligences was just becoming important and widely known. Plus we had in teacher training courses on different types of learning needs based on brain differences, etc. One learned a lot of awareness, but never enough strategeies to reach every kid. OR to overcome the limitations of our own ways of thinking and learning.
That last one is really the kicker. Teachers are humans whose brains are also hardwired. Most kids are not perceptive or analytical enough about themselves to help answer the question: What works for you?
So, from both sides, it’s really hard. It’s the kind of question (“What works for your kid?”) that thoughtful parents should be preparing to answer, when they talk to their kids’ teachers. Fortunately, there is, at least here, a strong receptivity to that, especially, when a kid has an IEP and receives special ed services.
I think I would love to have you as a teacher, @Mervin_Bitikofer . Of course, sometimes I think I should pay into a fund for counseling for my teachers for all the stress and PTSD I put them through!
Yep, that’s fair. I know now that I am an investigative learner (a label I made up). I like to learn just enough of the basics to be dangerous and then be picked up by the scruff of the neck and thrown into the deep end
Take languages for example. I found it impossible to gel with a biblical language in seminary, not because of the language but the way it was taught. Fast forward to today teaching myself Latin… well… You can keep your dull grammar books and declension lists thanks. I’ll take Aquinas, a Latin Lexicon, and a cup of tea. 
However, it has taken me most of my life to release that this is how I learn. I doubt I was prescient enough to know that when I was 15.
In my field as an avionics technician, it is often said you never really understand how a system works until you have to troubleshoot a problem.