borrowing from tomorrow

[kowalskil@alpha.montclair.edu]

On February 18 Mark Shapiro wrote:

> While this may not square with someone's "ideal" for teaching, it happens 
> to be the ugly truth, and since physics is an experimental science they 
> might as well get a feel for how one maintains the basic units experimentally.

In this pedagogical discussion of Coulomb's law, the word "ideal" refers 
to the way of teaching in which we stop explaining something today in terms 
of what will be explained tomorrow. In my opinion that kind of teaching is 
avoidable. The "ugly truth" was imposed on us by the SI (which was a big step 
forward with respect to the old CGSE/CGSM mixture). By accepting SI we have 
only one way of "not borrowing from tomorrow". We must start introducing 
"electricity in motion" first and "electricity at rest" second. Ampere first, 
coulomb second. What is wrong with this slogan? 

                                                   Ludwik Kowalski