On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 3:05 PM, EVDL Administrator <[email protected]> wrote: [snip] > None of their teachers has ever taught them about conservation of energy - I > mean REALLY taught it, with examples to demonstrate. They can't grasp the > concept intuitively, so it just isn't part of their world. [snip] > I really don't have any other answers to this. It's a fundamental problem > related to execrably, irresponsibly poor education. I don't think you can
Those are quite strong words, David. Believe me, I have tried for many years (24 now) to teach my Physics students and also those who are not in Physics the concepts. I've done demonstrations, had the students do experiments, and a host of other things and still I get students who don't get it. I don't think I fall into your "None of their teachers..." statement. Be careful with those absolute type of statements, they are almost certainly wrong at some point. Also, it is pointing at one piece of the system as the problem rather than looking at the whole thing. Until the entire society gets behind the needed changes it is extremely unlikely you will see much change in people's grasp of concepts like the conservation of energy. If any one thinks otherwise I challenge that person to teach in the k-12 system for a full 5 years before passing judgement. I'd be willing to wager that the majority of people will quit by then. That being said, the best thing to do after using the bicycle generator, where the 12V SLI battery gets its energy, etc. is to have the person go build one and see for them selves what happens. When they have their prototype running then they can come back and show you how well it works. As for the wire passing through the Earth's magnetic field a simple experiment I had my physics students is to get a long extension cord and connect each end of one of the wires to a galvanometer. Then have a student take a significant section of the wire and spin it like a jump rope. They were to do this along different directions to find the one which deflected the needle the most. Note that a galvanometer measures very small currents and the needle did not deflect very much. It wouldn't take much to convince you that the wire in a car idea won't likely even generate enough energy to compensate for the extra mass. Furthermore, the current in the wire will move in a direction so as to oppose the motion of the wire it self which will further slow the vehicle requiring more energy to propel it. -- David D. Nelson http://evalbum.com/1328 http://2003gizmo.blogspot.com http://www.levforum.com _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
