  Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and Chaos theory are three of the most
significant scientific advances of the 20th Century - each fundamentally
changing our understanding of the physical universe. The authors ask why the UK
National Curriculum in science almost entirely ignores them. Children and young
people regularly come into contact with the language, concepts and implications
of these theories through the media and through new technologies, and they are
the basis of many contemporary scientific and technological developments. There
is surely, therefore, an urgent need to include the concepts of '20th Century
physics' within the curriculum.
