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.)

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Dear Tony,

The above, 23.1.2021, perfectly illustrates my point, which I missed at the time. You still don’t know that w.r.t. theory of flight, I am ahead of the game. At college, you were taught a more complicated theory of flight than the truth. Similarly, you were taught a more complicated electromagnetic theory than the truth, and students are still so mistreated today.

The correct theories of flight and of electromagnetism are simpler, and not mathematical. The mathematics, which the lecturer and text book writer do not understand anyway, are taught by instrumentalists like you, who have a stranglehold on academia and school teaching. The instrumentalist will resist the move to a better, correct theory.

There are now three “theories of flight”. Theory 1, still rammed down the awed student’s throat, which you were taught, means a plane cannot fly upside down. Looking out of the window, one might occasionally see that refuted.

Some decades ago attempts were made to replace that obviously false theory by Theory 2, Newton’s second law. But this was also false.

The Science Museum has no theory of flight. The Smithsonian DC museum hedges its bets, giving both theory 1 and theory 2.

However, both those theories are not of flight, but theories of lift in a wind tunnel, almost certainly leading to a sub-optimal wing profile, and loss of an enormous amount of money in fuel. All their diagrams have the wing stationary, and the air moving. The truth is, the wing moves, not the air.

The correct Catt Theory 3, F=d/dt mv, has been ignored for decades. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x68r.htm .

The proper way to test a wing profile for optimal lift is not in a wind tunnel, but at the end of a long string, rotating in a horizontal plane. Perhaps on an airfield, this would certainly be cheaper than a wind tunnel.

In the real world, not in a wind tunnel, the air has no momentum, and no kinetic energy. It would be very difficult, and unnecessary, to work out the implications of giving the air spurious momentum and kinetic energy in a wind tunnel. The momentum of the wing is obviously irrelevant.

Ivor Catt 30.7.2021

31.7.2021

It is now in the Royal Society journal that a charged capacitor does not have a stationary electric field. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/yak.htm ; “there is no such a thing as a static electric field in a capacitor. ”

A scientist (but not an instrumentalist like you or Howie) would then conjecture; “Then is there such a thing as a stationary electric field?”

Chapter 1 of every text book on electromagnetism begins with a stationary electric field and a stationary magnetic field. The first is called E or D, and the second B or H. For simplicity, let us only talk about E and H, implying all four.

In the same way as all theories of flight before Catt have a stationary aeroplane, so all electromagnetic theories before Catt have a stationary electric field. The exception was Heaviside, who, unknown to Catt, wanted to start with a moving electromagnetic field. However, he was disappeared for more than half a century, as was Catt.

By the way, is there such a thing as an electric current? Not that it is intended to cast any doubt upon the existence of a phenomenon so called; but is it a current – that is, something moving through a wire – Oliver Heaviside, “Electrical Papers”, vol. 1, page 434, 1892.

Heaviside; http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x2a3.pdf ; “I think it would be perfectly practical to begin the serious development of the theory with electromagnetic waves of the easy kind. First of all, of course, there would be a good experimental knowledge all round ….”

We now have this experimental knowledge in the Wakefield results, which have not been explained from the assumption of a stationary electric E field, but map exactly onto a moving ExH field. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x343.pdf

A “sister” is the charged capacitor shorted at both ends. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/yak8.pdf . The mid-point does not discharge, but vacillates between + and -.