Electricty Misconceptions Spread By K6 Textbooks (original) (raw)

MISCONCEPTIONS SPREAD BY K-6 TEXTBOOKS:

"ELECTRICITY"
William J. Beaty, Aug/1995

How does 'electricity' work? If you've learned about electricity from grade-school textbooks, then first we have to do some "debunking" and find out how electricity DOESN'T work. Sorry if the following is a bit contentious at times. I wrote it in an attempt to get some things off my chest. If you keep watching this site, I'll probably clean it up and make it sound a bit more professional. Also, this file is still under construction and is being written, edited, corrected, etc. It does currently contain some mistakes of its own. I placed it online as a sort of 'trial by fire' in order to hear readers' responses and target weak or unclear sections for improvement. Please feel free to post comments. -Bill B.
scroll down

"Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things."
- Spinoza

AM I JUST A NITPICKER?
How SHOULD we teach electricity?
All the Electricity essays here
LINKS: Misconceptions in K6 textbooks(scroll down)
Electricity: the frequently-asked questions
Unedited notes on why electricity is so difficult

ELECTRICITY MISCONCEPTIONS:

Truth does not consist in minute accuracy of detail, but in conveying a right impression - Henry Alford

ELECTROSTATIC MISCONCEPTIONS:

Give me fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself. - Vifredo Pareto

ELECTRIC CURRENT MISCONCEPTIONS:

"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong."
- Richard Feynman

Some Electrical Misconception Articles Here:

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." -Tolstoy

"It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. " - Jacob Bronowski

[Goog ad]