User:Wjbeaty

William J. Beaty

Electrical Engineer, University of Washington

Past experience: Dept. manager and exhibit designer for Museum of Science, Boston. Textbook consultant for Holt Rinehart, Silver-Burdette-Ginn. Encyclopedia author, Harcourt-Brace-Jovanovich.

Long time physics phreak, see Articles: electrical physics

I'm constantly bitching and moaning about the "telephone game" which exists in science education. Misunderstandings cause our explanations to make less and less sense as decades pass. There seems to be too little self-correction. Generation after generation of misinformed students grow up to become teachers and authors who then pass along the distorted explanations to the next batch of learners. Unfortunately physics textbooks aren't like grammar texts where the slang eventually turns into proper usage. When a physics textbook undergoes a slow semantic drift, it becomes corrupted in an absolute sense: it becomes wrong.

It's time to close our eyes, stick fingers in our ears, then try to write a whole new collection of physics explanations by starting over from scratch (perhaps writing with pencils duct-taped to our elbows?) :)

In particular, I try to fight against the slow distortion in the meaning of the term "quantity of electricity." To physicsts, Electricity originally meant charge, not energy. Electricity then is the Coulombs, not the Joules. When electricity flows, we call this flow by the name "electric current." Many texts say something entirely different. They insist that "Electricity" is a form of energy, and they unwittingly teach that a flow of "electricity" is measured in watts rather than amperes. COME ON PEOPLE, electricity is not THAT hard to understand. But unless we first remove the many errors in semantics, unless we first narrowly define the word "electricity," and unless we fight against anyone who tries to change it, then "electricity" concepts will slowly mutate into morass of silly contradictions.

For example, the electrical energy in an electric circuit is not composed of electrons. Instead it is composed of EM fields, and we agree that light and radio waves are classes of electrical energy... yet most people insist that "Electricity" is the electrical energy. Bad move. Do we really want to define "Electricity" as meaning "electric and magnetic fields at low frequency?" If we say that Electricity is a form of energy, then unfortunately we are forced to insist that Electricity is the e-fields and the b-fields surrounding an electric circuit. We also are forced to say that Electricity flows in the empty space surrounding the wires and not inside them. It's the *charge* that flows within the wires, not the energy. (On the other hand, if we insist that "Electricity" flows inside of wires, then "Electricity" is not a form of energy, instead it is the charge on the subatomic particles which are flowing inside the wires.

See:


 * What is Electricity?
 * K-6 Science Misconceptions
 * K-6 Bad Physics
 * K-6 Bad Electricity

Before registering, I was the mysterious editor from 128.95.172.173