Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Veritasium videos are often subtly misleading which really annoys me.

It’s great for views, but terrible for science education.



Whenever he drops a new video, I just look for the "Here's how Veritasium was wrong" videos to get the real story.


It’s pretty rough because those ‘you’re wrong’ videos are actually just as wrong as he was. The main issue is that these complicated topics are difficult to describe properly is a 20 min English video that has to be edited to be interesting.

How electricity propagates is really complicated topic involving 3D vector calculus, for the EM waves. Most people don’t do electronic circuits by evaluating the vector field, they use the model of electron flow and the elements model (capacitance, inductance, resistance, voltage etc).

Ultimately these models are difficult to understand and most people (including my lecturers) make mistakes explaining them.


Can you link to a 100% correct explanation?

Can be in any format.


The best you can get is stuff people have extensively peer reviewed.

So Feynman Lectures on Physics for example are hard to beat. Though you will want to check for the various errata, the fact it was taught by a world class expert and received a great deal of peer review after the fact is about as much as you can hope for on any subject.


Is the implication then a 100% correct explanation does not exist?


More that we can’t verify if an explanation is correct only note where it isn’t.

I suspect there’s multiple math textbooks which combined with their errata are error free, but I don’t know if that’s true.


Sorry but no. Our ‘models’ of the universe will never be 100% correct.

If you’d like a 100% ‘correct’ explanation of the maxwells ‘laws’ of electrodynamics I refer to a sibling comment regarding the Feynman lectures. lectures.


Is one example his recent set of videos about how quickly electrical energy travels travels?


Yea, like “Darth Vader killed your father” they are true from a specific viewpoint, but people walk away misunderstanding what’s being described.

A more clear approach would be to say what we mean by electricity is the net flow of energy even if no electrons move from A to B, but that’s not going to get the same number of clicks.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: