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Re: EPSILON_ZERO, OK ?

At 11.58 01/03/00 -0500, you wrote:
Here again I am going to start teaching electricity. What will
I do with epsilon_zero this time? I always curse those who
decided to place epsilon_zero into the Coulomb Law. Please
let me know if you see anything heretical below.
...

Before most of this stuff got struck out of the IB HL course, I used to
bring in epsilon_nought (as I was brought up to say) as the "constant for
the parallel plate capacitor" (C= epsilon A/d). This would be a nice excuse
for a little excursion into Gauss'Law (as others have mentioned) to tie in
with its place in the Coulomb Law constant. But like Ludwik I also say
about 1/four pi epsilon_nought that "this is something to appreciate
properly in your next physics course".

Mark



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Mark Sylvester
United World College of the Adriatic,
34013 Duino TS, Italy.
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