The author of this article demonstrates how the unified approach to answering economic questions employed in modern quantitative macroeconomics research can be taught to undergraduate students using the Solow model. Through an application to post-WWII Japan, students get hands-on experience with (1) documenting empirical facts, (2) developing a model, (3) comparing the quantitative predictions of a model to the data, and (4) using a model as a laboratory to run counterfactual "experiments." This application thus offers instructors a low-cost way to "bridge the gap" between the content typically covered at the intermediate undergraduate level and the tools and methods commonly used by macroeconomists in their everyday research.