[Scully]

I can tell you from hard experience that the typical undergraduate is stone ignorant of these subjects.

I'll second this - most of my students didn't even have a clue as to what friction is. And yes, I chose a subject near and dear to their hearts to explain friction. They finally got the concept. (But good grief! We are speaking of "College" students!)

[Physicist]

I'll second this - most of my students didn't even have a clue as to what friction is.

I don't expect an incoming student to know what friction is. I had to train myself to stop expecting that they know what sines and cosines are, beyond too-convenient buttons on their calculators. A problem like, "there's a 10-foot ladder propped at a 60-degree angle against a house; how high does it reach?" is quite beyond most freshmen.

[Junior]

From MacDorcha's postings, it is obvious the average college student has little or no concept of written English.