Re: [Phys-L] The status of Kirchhoff''s laws

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

About six weeks ago I made some significant improvements to the wikipedia article 
on Kirchhoff's laws.  This was part of an experiment, to see whether the right
answer would endure ... as opposed to being more-or-less immediately replaced
by wrong answers.

The good news is that here we are, six weeks later, and no lasting harm has been 
done to the article.  There have been a few lame attempts at vandalism, but these
were soon reverted.

On 03/02/2013 05:53 PM, Derek Chirnside wrote:
> Well done John.
>
> One edit has already been undone:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kirchhoff%27s_circuit_laws&action=history

That problem didn't last long.  I immediately restored what I had done
and added a little bit of clarification, and that seems to have been 
satisfactory.

=========================

This has emboldened me to make further improvements.  Just now I corrected the
explanation for Kirchhoff's voltage law.  The previous explanation in terms of
conservation of energy was nonsense;  the existence of betatrons being the
obvious counterexample.

I installed a correct explanation in terms of the Maxwell-Faraday law of induction.

Rather than entirely deleting the old explanation, I /commented it out/ along
with an explanation.  Maybe this will deter those who might be tempted to return
to the wrong explanation.

We shall see how long this holds up.  Knock on wood.