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Re: borrowing from tomorrow

Two questions:

At this time of the year electricity is upon us. I am posting a quotation
from the draft of an article (sent to The Science Teacher by Ellis Noll)
about the way of teaching Coulomb's law. How do you deal with the dilemma
described in the third paragraph?
Ludwik Kowalski
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.... The sequence on electricity begins with electrostatics. We establish
the existence of two kinds of charge...

Exactly how is this established, i.e. the existence of two kinds of charge?
I'd be interested especially in how this is accomplished.


How can we introduce
the coulomb unit without violating the rule of ideal teaching? The rule calls
for logical continuity; it does not allow us to explain something today in
terms of what is going to be explained tomorrow. In practice the rule is often
violated but this is not desirable. What should we do?

I'm wondering exactly whose logic and whose continuity is entailed in this
logical continuity. I know that I and many others for many years (decades?
centuries even?) have attempted to use this principle, but it does not seem
to be all that effectve at least in terms of changes in student
understanding. I wonder if our logic and our continuity is not what's
called for here.

Dewey

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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775
Department of Physics/SN318 Fax: (208)385-4330
Boise State University dykstrad@varney.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper

"Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and
are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external
world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld,
1938

"Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in
There Are No Electrons, 1991.
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