But the actual story as described in the paper is vaguely familiar. Before reading it my mind wandered to Einstein and quantization of light.
Is this mainly a US myth perhaps?
We (hopefully) historically stand in a similar position with regard to General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. We know they don't go together. We don't know what the correct answer is. It's an understood problem. But it's not like physicists spend their days running around and shrieking and breaking down into tears about it, and in the meantime, we get on with using GR & QM to predict things.
It may be too strong to say "Physicists observed this issue with the equations and their freakout about them directly led to quantization." But it was a real problem with the equations, and it's certainly related to what led to quantization, and if the story glosses over yet another instance of what a physicists perceived as a mathematical convenience that turned out to be quite physically real, I'm not sure that's a vital detail for every high school student.
As I understand, it wasn’t meant to mean that the theory had a catastrophic flaw, but rather that the infinite energy implied at the asymptote itself represented an (obviously unobserved, thus curious) physical catastrophe.
I agree with your characterization that an unresolved catastrophe of the latter kind does not imply a crisis of science the way an unresolved “catastrophe” of the former kind might.
“Critical” may be a more familiar word used in similar contexts, honed in on a specific threshold of a dramatic behavior change.
None of these words in this usage style refer to the scientific social process, but to the phenomena.
Please not that the authors are Norwegian at a Norwegian university, and the first citation are "KVANTEFYSIKKENS UTVIKLING i fysikklærebøker, vitenskapshistorien og undervisning" by Reidun Renstrøm at the University of Oslo, all proclaiming the myth being perversive.
I would be careful proclaiming this being some kind of American phenomenon.
Rather than merely that he saw an apple fall nearby, and wondered why it fell downwards.
I have basically no physics education, but I was educated in the US. In my high school, where I took an ordinary, low-quality physics course (the one for weak students that didn't require calculus), the introduction of quantum mechanics was motivated by the photoelectric effect. Now, like I said, I don't really have any physics education and I don't really understand the photoelectric effect _or_ quantum mechanics, but my basic recollection was waves hands you shine a light on certain materials and electrons pop out, and it looks for various reasons like this behavior is packet-y rather than smooth as one might expect.
Basically in an intro American physics class, if they've got an opportunity to get Einstein involved, they're gonna take it.
I've never heard of this myth either.
FWIW, the authors, Nils-Erik Bomark and Reidun Renstrøm, also appear to work at .no universities.
EDIT: both at high school and across multiple different lecturers at university
https://archive.org/stream/LIBOFFIntroductoryQuantumMechanic...
https://archive.org/details/lecturesonquantu0000baym/mode/2u...
I don't think the Mechanical Uselessverse (as we referred to it) would be a text for these schools, thought it was produced at caltech and it apparently does refer to the ultraviolet catastrophe. I think you're more likely to find it in videos and narrative historical materials where story is more important.
https://archive.org/details/beyondmechanical0000olen/mode/2u...