Originally Posted by
tomato coupe
A physics or engineering education teaches you when it's appropriate to use a simple model, and when you need to use a more complex model.
I've taught both undergrads and graduates. I tell them that as undergrads, we teach them the simple models; as graduates, we teach them the full-on, detailed, obsessive models; and as professors we spend the rest of our careers figuring out when we have to do the detailed full-on exhaustive and exhausting thing and when we can get away with the simple thing.