I saw this on Facebook a couple of days ago, and I think I'm just now at the point where I can really put a few cents in on it. One of the biggest reasons I am studying to become a teacher is to provide our young people with a quality education. Ridiculous misinformation like that which is contained in this poor excuse for a textbook is going to make my job ridiculously hard, so I feel like it's my duty to try and refute it a bit. I've recently adopted a phrase from HBO's The Newsroom as my mantra toward this end. In the series, Jeff Daniels' character, Will McAvoy, says, "I'm on a mission to civilize!" When Sam Waterston's character asks him how it's going, he says, "Progress is slow, but I'm in it for the long haul!" I realize the enormity of my task as a teacher, but I really am in it for the long haul.
I would like to start by disclosing my qualifications on the subject. I am not an electrical engineer, nor do I have a degree in electronics. I'm not even studying to be a science teacher (anymore). I was, however, a satellite/wideband communications technician in the Washington Air National Guard for six years. In order to get this job, I had to graduate from the U.S. Air Force's Electronic Principles course. I did this with a 98% grade average and received the U.S.A.F.'s "Distinguished Graduate" award for my class. Ok, with that said, here goes:
Electricity is a mystery. It's not, actually. It's one of the most well-known and thoroughly studied areas in science. No one has ever observed it or heard it or felt it. I've personally observed it and heard it each time I've seen a spark/arc on a car battery terminal when hooking up the final jumper cables terminal. Not to mention every lightning bolt I've ever seen, and countless other instances of seeing arcs. Oh, and anyone who has ever put a 9V battery on his or her tongue, or had the misfortune of touching an electric fence, or being tazed has felt it. We can see and hear and feel only what electricity does. Again: arcs, lightning, 9V batteries - those are observations of ELECTRICITY. Not what it does. We know that it makes light bulbs shine and irons heat up and telephones ring. But we cannot say what electricity itself is like. Well, we actually have very detailed scientific formulas that describe exactly how electricity behaves (i.e. what it is "like"). The one of these formulas that immediately comes to mind is Ohm's Law (That's right. It's a LAW. Like gravity. Not a theory, so you can't play that B.S. card, which is a whole other soapbox rant). The formula for Ohm's law is E = IR. It can also be written I = E/R, or R = E/I where E represents voltage, I represents current, and R represents resistance. This formula shows the relationship between these characteristics of electricity, and it's one of the most fundamental formulas in modern science.
We cannot even say where electricity comes from. Well, we can, actually. Electricity is simply the transfer of electrons from one atom to another through valance bands. Valance bands are usually the outer layers of electrons that make up a given atom. Atoms of elements that are highly conductive usually have a lot of valance bands, and therefore are able to transfer more electrons than the atoms of elements which are less conductive. Some scientists think that the sun may be the source of most electricity. I want to know which "scientists" these are. While it's true that most of the energy on Earth comes from the sun, electricity itself is one of the four fundamental forces of the universe. The sun provides us with energy, and that is often transferred into electrical energy, but the sun is one of billions upon billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of billions upon billions of galaxies in the known universe. It may be the source of a lot of our electricity, but there's a lot more electricity in the universe. Others think that the movement of the earth produces some of it. Again, who are these people? It would be more appropriate to say that the electricity causes movement (along with those other fundamental forces - gravity, strong and weak nuclear, to be exact). The positive and negative charges of atoms cause those atoms and molecules to attract or repel one another, which often results in movement. All anyone knows is that electricity seems to be everywhere and that there are many ways to bring it forth. We know a lot more than that, actually. In fact, if that were all we know, there would be absolutely no way that this blog I'm typing could be posted on the internet, because computer science would not exist if we didn't know more about electricity - if there weren't absolute laws (like the one I described earlier) that govern its behavior.
I'm a fierce advocate of the first amendment (freedom of speech, religion, and the press are our most important right in my opinion), but if I ever wanted to burn a book, it would be this one.
I am the Reverend Humpy and I have approved this message.
P.S. If any of my facts are wrong here, I welcome corrections. Which, I'm sure, is the complete opposite of the attitude of the idiots who wrote that "textbook."
2 comments:
Right you are Reverend. Electricity is simply the movement of electrons. A more fundamental law and perhaps even simpler than Ohm's law is that positive and negative charges attract. If you have a positively charged object next to a negatively charged object, electrons will flow and you have electricity. This is how a battery works as well as basic chemical bonds.
On a second note, as a science teacher, we deal with these misconceptions on a daily basis and I'm so glad to hear someone else trying to deal with them. That being said, sometimes it's like trying to talk to a rock especially if what they "Know" is divine or because Mom and Dad say so. Thank you, Reverend, for spreading common sense.
I should thank you. As a science teacher you do a lot more to influence kids on matters of fact than I do. ;o)
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