Re: light is slowing down

[LUDWIK KOWALSKI <KOWALSKIL@alpha.montclair.edu>]

> Date: Sat, 07 Feb 1998 09:45:56 -0500 (EST)
> From: "Donald E. Simanek" <dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu>
> Subject: Re: Light slows down in glass?
>
> ........
> In another discussion group, on an entirely different subject, someone
> wondered whether a particular subject could be taught in high school
> without telling some lies. I wonder whether *any* subject, including
> physics, can be taught in schools without telling lies, unless one limits
> oneself to mundane facts and phenomena, and makes no attempt to "explain". 

    So we may need some smokescreen after all. 

People often debate about what to eliminate in order to follow the "less 
is more" idea. Everything that needs "lies" should be eliminated. 
"A First Course in Physics" by Millikan and Gale (1906) is a good prototype 
for an introductory physics text, in my opinion.

I remember reading somewhere that a small greenhouse box in which glass was 
replaced by an IR-transparent crystal had essentially the same temperature
for two substances. It is the absence of convection, they said, that is the 
main cause of high temperatures in green houses.
                                                    Ludwik Kowalski