I had a clever idea recently for a column (Physics Today??? The Physics Teacher???) and/or webpage titled "Unconventional Physics". The goal would be to point out some of the inconvenient, inconsistent, or just plain incorrect conventions that exist in physics. There are many cases where good 20/20 hindsight suggests that different choices would have made life much simpler.
Hopefully it could be written with enough flare to make it an enjoyable read :-) Some ideas that come to mind - many of which have been discussed here at some point:
1) sign of the electron charge,
2) poles on magnets,
3) theta is polar angle in 2D and azimuthal angle in 3D (unless you are a mathematician!)
4) di/do/f sign conventions in optics
5) spdf orbital designations
6) "heat" and all that goes with it
7) weight/apparent weight/force of gravity
8) P is antiparalle to E & D, while M is parallel to B & H
9) not using geometric calculus
10) using cgs units in astrophysics
I'm sure others can add more of their own. Of course, the hurdles for actually "correcting" the problems are nearly insurmountable, but just recognizing them is a big step.
Tim Folkerts
>I propose (seriously - for once) that we retain the pole concept
>(for historical, pedagogical reasons) but refer to the poles
>as the 'In' pole and the 'Out' pole. Then the direction of the
>field is just the direction of whatever it is that is pointing
>in or out.
>After I
>tell them the convention physicists have adopted is that earth's
>geographic north pole is a magnetic south pole, the students that
>guessed backwards still think their way is better and that physicists
>made the wrong choice. This is somewhat similar to how students react
>who think the direction of electric current should be defined by
>electrons rather than the direction positive charges would go.