Re: Favorite Test Questions

[brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>]

At 12:05 3/12/98 EST, David Bowman wrote:

> Light bulb filaments are made of tungsten.  Tungsten is a metal.  Metals are
> ohmic substances.  Ohmic substances obey Ohm's law.  What it *means* to obey
> Ohm's law is that for a uniform current through a uniform sample of the
> substance, the current intensity in an asymptotic steady state is
> proportional to the electric potential difference across the sample for a
> wide range of current intensities and potential drops.   The proportionality
> constant *may* be (and almost always is to some degree) temperature-
> dependent.  The proportionality condition is to hold for a given *fixed*
> temperature of the sample.
> ...
> David Bowman
> dbowman@gtc.georgetown.ky.us

By means of a simple four-legged syllogism and an over-constrained
definition David here sets out to convince us that an incandescent 
filament or by the same token, another strikingly non-linear device 
like a thermistor is ohmic,  which means in MY definition that it 
would have a linear relation between voltage and current.
 
 This plainly will not do!

Whatcott   Altus OK