Traditional methods used to teach physics to students who are physics or engineering majors are inappropriate for introductory, ‘‘science literacy’’ courses. We describe here an alternative ‘‘top‐down’’ teaching method which has been used successfully to enhance such a course given at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The approach reverses the traditional sequence of instruction and is based on beginning all lecture treatments with discussions of complex, yet familiar phenomena and working backward to discussions of the simple physical laws underlying them. We make extensive use of demonstrations and give examples of the particular application of this method to the teaching of electronics. The advantages and problems of this approach compared to traditional teaching methods in physics are also discussed.