"Science" textbook for Christian schools can't even explain electricity

[dreadgeek]

A friend posting this link on her FB wall: http://www.dangerousminds.net/commen...city_gives_up/

The thing that terrifies me is that this is allegedly a *science* book! Here is the scary part:

"Electricity is a mystery. No one has ever observed it or heard it or felt it. We can see and hear and feel only what electricity 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.

We cannot even say where electricity comes from. Some scientists think that the sun may be the source of most electricity. Others think that the movement of the earth produces some of it. All anyone knows is that electricity seems to be everywhere and that there are many ways to bring it forth.

How would you have to change the way you get ready for school if you did not use electricity?"

Okay, the lies stack up fast and furious in that little excerpt.

1) It is simply not true that scientists don't know what electricity is or where it comes from. In fact, we DO know what it is. An electric current is caused by charged particles.

2) While the sun *does* produce moving charged particles it is NOT the *direct source* of electrical currents on this planet. We do not get electricity 'from' the sun. What happens is that the sun transfers energy to the Earth in the form of sunlight. That energy goes into, for instance, making plants grow. Plant-eating animals eat the plants and are, in turn, eaten by meat-eating animals or they die of other causes. Over sufficiently long amounts of time, the bodies of the fallen get turned into oil and we then drill the oil and use that to make electricity.

3) It is *also* true that the movement of the Earth--specifically the fact that the core of our planet is a core of liquid iron and nickel which is spinning which creates a current (yet more charged particles) which creates the magnetosphere that surrounds the planet and keeps the solar wind (those charged particles coming from the sun) from stripping away our atmosphere. But we don't get electricity from *motion* of the planet.

4) We can't experience electricity directly? If you believe that you've NEVER experienced static electricity (more charged particles) or you've never been on a hill top during a thunderstorm or you've never walked underneath a high-tension power line or you've never inadvertently shocked yourself. All of those are examples of directly experiencing electricity.

Now, lest someone way "yes but we can't see electricity" let me just cut that off quickly. Electricity is just light that is out of the wavelength our eyes are capable of detecting. If there had been ANY need for our ancestors to have developed the ability to see outside of a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum we would have those senses. Light is the same *kind* of 'stuff' as electricity, it's just that our eyes evolved to detect visible light but not, for instance, radio waves.

Cheers
Aj