Things like that are why early instruction is so important and why it’s a pity we do this badly. To do modern physics, you need imaginary number and to understand those you really only need the concepts of a coordinate system with axes and vectors. This kind of stuff isn’t hard for kids with their flexible minds and I think one of the biggest issues is that materials are written by adults who know the stuff too well to put it into learning words or by people who don’t grasp the end meaning, etc. I hated every math book I had. Figured the game was this: take a hard concept, give the most extremely basic intro - like 2 + 2 level - and then skip 27 steps and say “thus” or “from this we see”. Never found one that actually explained.
Feynman used to say we should teach quantum mechanics to 10 year olds because it would make intuitive sense to them. He was right. When you’re older, the concepts of probability amplitudes - going back to vectors and imaginary numbers, etc. - are how the infinite states cancel, etc. become too hard.