Re: textbook touchstones

[Doug Craigen <dcc@ESCAPE.CA>]

> charges. They promised to address the issue "in the next edition".
> That was five five years ago.
> Ludwik Kowalski

Which makes ten years ago?  Or perhaps, you mean five years each ;->

> > > ...one of my fave typo checks as a reviewer for physics texts is:
> > > "How do they misspell KIRCHHOFF?"

There's an old usenet saying that spelling flames are the lowest form of
abuse.  Of course its a different context.  On usenet (and on listservs
for that matter) spelling flames usually correlated well with people
wishing to carry on a fight, but they have exhausted any valid grounds
for disagreement that they may have originally had.  With textbooks
people will hang onto them and use them as authoritative sources for
years, so being correct about everything (including spelling) is
important.

If I understand Ludwik's capacitor issue correctly this is not quite a
correction so much as an important "real world" consideration.  Ideal
capacitors such as those discussed in textbooks would have equal charges
when connected in series.  However, such capacitors don't exist - and
perhaps talking about them is a worse idealization than talking about
"frictionless surfaces, perfectly elastic collisions" etc.

()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()

Doug Craigen
          http://www.dctech.com/physics/