Updated 2/11/98. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. USE THE THREAD "ABOUT THE
LIST" IF YOU WANT TO POST A COMMENT. OR START A THREAD DEVOTED TO AN ITEM.
Contact me IN PRIVATE if you want to remove some of YOUR items or reedit
them. Or send additional items to me ALSO IN PRIVATE. Let us follow the
suggestion that POSITIVE is used instead of NEGATIVE; I changed my item 4
to accomplish this. Also COMMON misconceptions found in many TEXTBOOKS,
not student misconceptions. I do not think that we should compeet with
The Physics Teacher column of Mario Iona (who goes after individual authors,
documenting everything, etc.) If you feel that a reference is important for
an item send it to me and I will append it at the list of references.
Ludwik Kowalski, (kowalskiL@alpha.montclair.edu)
A LIST OF TEXTBOOK MISCONCEPTIONS
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1) The Physics of Flight: It's air-deflection, not wing shape
2) Suppression of convection is the main factor responsible for higher
temperatures in green houses and closed cars.
3) Capacitors in series: the equilibrated charges are not equal in the
dc circuits.
4) Melting of ice under skating blades is not due to high pressure.
5) Coriolis effect does not make the toilet water go round and round.
6) Deans know what they are doing at least some of the time.
7) Batteries are sources of charge.
8) My house is dirty because of El Nino.
9) Gravity in space is zero (or very small, e.g. NASA's 'microgravity')
10) Filled and empty balloons directly demonstrate air's weight
11) Friction is caused by surface roughness (interlocking asperites)
12) Infrared light is special, it is "heat"
13) Ben Franklin's kite was struck by lightning
14) Clouds, fog, etc. are made of vapor (rather than droplets)
15) The Earth's "N" pole resides in the northern hemisphere
16) Light from the sun is perfectly parallel
17) Laser coherence is caused by atoms' in-phase emission
18) Sound travels much better through solids and liquids than through gas
19) For every motion there is an equal and opposite motion
20) Reentering spacecraft are heated only by friction.
21) Salt water contains molecules of NaCl
22) Light propagates at c even when in transparant media
23) The Physics of Flight: It's air-deflection, not wing shape
24) The green house effect: suppression of convection is the main factor.
23) Capacitors in series: the equilibrated charges are not equal in dc
the circuits.
24) Melting of ice under skating blades is due to high pressure.