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To: null and void
Electricity Comes From Wall Sockets are articles of faith
Actually, the proposition that "Electricity comes from wall sockets" is NOT an article of faith. That is tested each and every day, by each and every one of us, with daily positive and practical results.

If you're going to talk about an article of faith, you can say "Electricity comes from the power company" as being an untested article of faith... though that is easily put to the test (as I have inadvertently done in my youth) by failing to pay your power bill. You could argue that the ability of the power company people to turn off your electricity still doesn't PROVE that they provide it... but then you would be a pretty hopeless Doubting Thomas, wouldn't you?

A true example of faith with regard to electricity is the whole subject of electrons. Most of us ASSUME that what THEY tell us (that electricity is the flow of electrons, since 1892, H. A. Lorentz) is true... and THAT is an article of faith, since none of us have actually ever seen an electron. In fact, even scientists never saw electrons all during the decades in which they repeated and refined the electron theory... though they have seen them recently and interestingly enough what they have seen fits quite nicely with what they described to us for all those years.

But still, for most of us, your point is absolutely correct: we have FAITH that electricity is the flow of electrons.

190 posted on 07/25/2011 5:44:24 AM PDT by samtheman
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To: samtheman
Actually, the proposition that "Electricity comes from wall sockets" is NOT an article of faith.

Ouch.

Good point.

Of course I meant that most people behave as if the electric flow magically appears at the socket, with no connection to anything past their own circuit breakers., if they even think it back that far.

I could see half the mouth-breathers who went to my high school taking a microwave and a naked wall outlet from the hardware store camping...

213 posted on 07/25/2011 9:21:34 AM PDT by null and void (Day 915. When your only tools are a Hammer & Sickle, everything looks like a Capitalist...)
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