Affiliation:
1. Private consultant, New York, New York 10025
Abstract
In recent years, more courses in electromagnetism are using the “Système International” (SI) units as opposed to Gaussian-cgs. The confusing notation used to formulate SI with origins in the early 19th century still persists in instruction. This work shows that electromagnetism may be taught relatively painlessly in the units that virtually everyone uses by employing a new presentation that makes the equations nearly as simple as those in the Heaviside–Lorentz system commonly used by theoretical physicists. Introducing a new coupling constant κ and some new notation for the fields, it is possible to dispense with ϵ0 and μ0 and the conceptual framework from which they come. As a result, it is possible achieve much greater clarity, while using all the same symbols and relations as in the extant literature.
Publisher
American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT)
Subject
General Physics and Astronomy
Reference17 articles.
1. Dimensions and Units in Electromagnetism
2. Electromagnetic Equations in Generalized Units
3. Electromagnetic Equations Written in a Form Independent of the System of Units
4. This argument is less persuasive if one regards the electrostatic force as an action at a distance.
5. One might ask whether there could be a separate κ for the creation and the response to the field. This would be forbidden by CPT symmetry and, thus, by quantum field theories.