Re: [Phys-l] two kinds of electrical charge ????????

["Jeffrey Schnick" <JSchnick@Anselm.Edu>]

On Tuesday, July 31, 2007 7:10 PM, John Denker wrote
> ... the students come in perfectly happy
> with a one-component model ... so why go to the trouble of beating
> it out of them, when for 250 years the math and the physics have
> said that the one-component model was fundamentally correct?
I think that most students enter introductory college/university physics courses believing that there are two kinds of charge.  I don't have hard evidence to support this statement.  If it is true, it doesn't necessarily mean that they believe in a two-component model.  Still, I am not so sure that students "come in perfectly happy with a one-component model."  On what evidence do you base your statement that they do?

The statement that "they have nothing to do with addition and subtraction" at 
<http://www.triumf.info/public/about/physics_101-3.php>
and the discussion of "two kinds of charge" at
<http://www.wl.k12.in.us/hs/depts/sci/physics/p2u11/p2u11CASTLE_U2_Reading3.pdf>
suggest that some kids in North America are being exposed to a two-component model.