Yes
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Yes or
No? (no subject) Inbox 23.1.2021
Ivor, Apparently
you hope that I will NOT answer your question: "Should
you knowingly lie to students in order to help an
electrician to wire up a house?" So, instead I will make some other remarks about
education: 1. As an engineering undergraduate at Southampton, we were
taught in the first year how an aerofoil shaped wing creates lift, so that
heavier-than-air planes can fly. On the basis of this explanation it is clear that an aeroplane cannot
fly upside down. The reason that it can do so is rather
complicated, and if that had been explained to us as first year engineering
undergraduates, we would probably have just been confused and understood even
less. (of course, I cannot say if the lecturer KNOWINGLY lied to us or if he
told us what he thought was true.) 2. I am sure that often I have provided students with a 'simple'
explanation of some topic, knowing that it was not the full story. I
hope that I presented such topics in a framework that I told the students
that it was a simplified explanation and that they would learn a more
complete explanation at a more advanced stage of their education (assuming,
of courser, that they did keep their education
going, and did not stop to get a job or fail their exams, etc. ) I do not see anything wrong with that,
although I do agree one should let the students know that they are being told
a 'simplified' story and that there is really more to it than they are being
told. 3. You are frequently telling us that there is 'no static field
in a capacitor when charged up via a resistor'. (I have never said that. - Ivor
Catt 16.9.2024) Presumably you believe this (on the reasonable basis that the
capacitor is a bit like a funny-shaped transmission line which is not
terminated at either end in its characteristic impedance). In the case
that you were teaching this to students, you might reasonably tell them that
a very close approximation to this behaviour is by solving a simple
continuous-time first order differential equation, and show how this gives
the smooth exponential charge which is in all the standard textbooks.
So, to avoid KNOWINGLY lying to these students you would have to tell them
that really this smooth curve is an approximation to a series of steps which
get smaller and smaller but never ending. (That is what you tell us you
believe is 'truth'). So after a while, two things may occur: 1. You will give the students an exercise to calculate the
charging curve, and they will use their calculators for that and it will use
a discrete-time approximation to the smooth exponential so they will get a
series of points through which they will naturally draw a smooth line.
However, the points created by the calculator have nothing to do with
reflections on the 'capacitor as a transmission line'. Will
you KNOWINGLY let them believe that the points they calculate are the steps
from the reflections on the transmission line? 2. At least one of the students may ask, what happens when the
steps are smaller than the size of the molecules/atoms/electrons/quarks ...
or whatever is believed to constitute 'matter'. Maybe you believe
there are no such things, and that matter is infinitely divisible. That
was a common issue of debate in classical Greek and Roman times, and there
was the 'theory' that matter was made up of 'Earth, Air, Fire and Water',
each different substance having different proportions of them. If you
wish to adhere to the non-divisibility of matter, then you have to throw out
most of Chemistry, and indeed most of the science of the last two hundred
years or so, and go back to the issues which so troubled Oersted. So
will you KNOWINGLY let your students believe that there is truth in what they
learn in Chemistry, Medical studies, military weapons technology, semiconductor
electronics, when you believe it to be all false? On the other hand, if you believe that matter is made up of particles,
then whatever these particles are, the steps of charge in the reflections
going to and fro in the capacitor get smaller and smaller - so what is
'charge'? You cannot any more say that it is a property of one of these
particles which is called an electron. How do you explain the
atom bomb or hydrogen bomb? Or were these just early examples of 'fake
news' and never really happened? If so, during my army time, I missed
the chance to volunteer to go to Christmas Island, with time off in
Hawaii. I have never been to Hawaii, and now I never shall the
opportunity to go there Good Luck, Tony Davies 2021 Jan 23 @ 1026 GMT Prof Anthony C
Davies Emeritus
Professor, King's College London IEEE R8 History
Activities coordination (.... 2020) IEEE Industry Applications Society Distinguished Lecturer 2017-2018 IEEE Industry Applications Society Virtual-Round-Table Moderator IEEE CAS Magazine Editorial Board (2020-....) e-mail: tonydavies@ieee.org web: www.tonydavies.org.uk On Friday, 22 January 2021, 02:14:05 GMT, Ivor Catt <ivorcatt@gmail.com>
wrote: Dear Tony, Ten hours ago you received the question from me. I wrote; " Anyway,
this is shadow boxing. My important question for you, which I repeat, is;
"Should you lie to students in order to help an electrician to wire up a
house?" Thank goodness you have not answered yet. The correct question
includes'; "knowingly". "Should you knowingly lie to students in order to help an
electrician to wire up a house?" I realised the omission, so I got
up at 2am to put the omission right. Fortunately you have not answered yet. Only this morning do I realise that this dialogue bears directly on
what happened between me, you and Hsue. If you understand what is at stake, you will still refuse to answer
the question; "Should you knowingly lie to students in order to help an
electrician to wire up a house?"
There is much at stake. Ivor |
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