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'. 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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