Can you trust your physics instructor? Yes for the most part you can sure, but. It appears to me we cannot trust physics instructors in every regard. Too many theories being purported and mathematically calculated with proofs, only years later to find out they were are wrong. When observation negates the physics instructor, one should hesitate. Trust no one. It is much easier that way and a smarter way to live.
Many will say that you cannot break the laws of physics, but indeed many are not laws but rather theories, which work most of the time. This is not to say you can run around and stop gravity or jump off a building or drive in front of a train. And beware of urban myths too.
Additionally I have watched "Myth Busters" blow it a few times. Once when they were trying to figure out how an aircraft was chopped in pieces and all these experts said it was one thing. Yet I had watched physically and aircraft get away from someone and chop up another and it looked just like that. So, I question myth busters too.
Discovery Channel is okay mostly but often I catch them making mistakes and/or arguing both sides of an argument in different segments, such as what killed the Dinasaurs. Or re-run clips of Carl Sagan stated things we once thought only to find out with NASA Probes they were wrong. So, I hesitate often in complete trust to the physics instructors. Listen and if it makes sense sure, if not, no I cannot commit that to memory.
Skeptic? Perhaps, but over the years I have just observed too much BS of created reality trumping or attemptings to trump actual reality. So, I think for now, I trust me. Not a physics instructor. Although would take it into consideration, never would I rely solely on it. Others may blindly follow, but as they do, often they are so trapped in linear thought, dazed and confused that they cannot even reason their way out of a paper bag, with their PhD.
You see; Trust gut, trust self. Besides humans lie and physics instructors are human. So when humans are involved every thing is merely a grain of salt. This is not to say throw away the physics books, it is merely to say, that the old saying believe half of what you read may also be worth a thought or too, although wasn