I just received the Nov 2002 issue of Model Railroader, and was thumbing through it. I could not believe the error in Back to Basics on pg 56. Milli means one thousandth, not one hundredth. 0.001A is 1mA, 0.010A is 10mA and 0.100A is 100mA. And this was carried through the column.
Then I started reading the whole column. Another error: the water analogy, amps are like flow and volts are like pressure; not the other way around !! An ampere is a Coulombs per second by definition, and a volt is a Joules per Coulomb, and Watts are Joules per second. Further the water pressure to your house will drop as you open faucets, though the flow may increase. It is amazing that figure 4 is correct.
I am too close to Engineering to see how this is possible to slip up like this. My dad was an Electrical Engineer involved with radar system design, my mother a Metallurgical Engineer, and I design Hard Disk Drives.
With the number of totally WRONG things in this column, you need to publish a completely re-done version in the near future.
You beat me to it, Nigel! I was amazed at these mistakes. I have a feeling the author had the right ideas in mind but something got lost between writing, editing etc.
The analogy of voltage as pressure and current has flow has been used for a very long time. I have a very old science textbook (from the 1930s or so) with cute Art Deco drawings of electrons (stick figure people) piling into a bucket to create the voltage (pressure) of a battery. Resistance is shown as the electrons jumping hurdles to get from one place to another.
Here is the text of the correction to appear in our Decembber issue:
"Correction: We’d like to rectify two errors in our November Back to Basics column, ‘Electricity’:
"• One milliamp is a thousandth, not a hundredth, of an amp.
“• In the conventional comparison of water and electricity, current (amps) is compared to flow and voltage is compared to pressure. – A. S.”
I am over 24 years subscriber of MR and I know how the people arond me like the MR. It is an excellent magazine, but the errors in the basics (articles) can be fatal.
Who will know for eg. in January 2003 when he reads again the article form November 2002 that there is a correction in December issue.
I do not mind in a more complex article (like it was about the CTC or about the TATV) that the corrections appear almost in the whole following year, but in the basics? It is extremely difficult later to collect all those corrections. Please do not forget to whom you present those basics - not to us long time experienced modelers, but mainly to childrens, newcomers etc. and it will be their first touch with our hobby. It is extremely difficult to correct their mind. Believe me I run long time a small club for new model railroaders and every wrong information was often over years on program and many of those youngsters had to correct many faults they made upon wrong information (not only from MR).
Thank you for your support over the years. We work to avoid errors and we regret it when they make it into print. Sometimes they get past us, despite our best intentions.
We’ll print the same correction I’ve posted here in our December issue. I think that’s all anyone can reasonably expect.
Here is the complete lsit of errors in the mentioned article.
On page 54 the part starting with:
“Electricity is measured…”
is completely wrong, because the voltage means tension – i.e. it is the force or pressure of the water, while the amps means how many water flows through the pipe.
On page 56 the mentione milliamper is not hundreds of ampere.
In the next part the bulb usually draws more the 10mA, more closer to 100 mA. For LEDs we can expect currents around 10 mA.
On page 58 in the beginnig the calculation is completely wrong.
10 x 10 mA or 20 x 5 mA equals to 0,1 A, instead of written 1A!
Also in the part describing the switches is a problem. I really do not understand why to introduce newer description for switch configuration when the old one works perfect.
I remember from my school time (long-long time ago), that the switches are described by poles and terminals (not throws). It makes the life much more easier to remember that how many soldering points (terminals) are on the switch and how many inputs (poles) have the switch.
SPST –
single pole single terminal is the simplest one
SPDT –
single pole double terminal means the input can be switched between two terminals
DPST –
double pole single terminal when you can simultaneously switch two different circuits
DPDT –
double pole double terminal is the typical switch for changing a polarity in DC circuit
I think it will be very difficult to correct such bad article with few lines of text in the December issue of MR. It is probably better to place a single line:
“Dear readers please forget and avoid our article Back to Basics in the Nov. 2002 issue of MR“
Here’s a suggestion: A running contest, the prize of which is a free sample copy of one of MR’s sister publications (including GMR and MRP), which prize is offered to any subscribing reader who sends in a postcard that lists all the errors in a given issue.
MR editorial staff are thus motivated to get their facts straight, but in reality they will never have to pony up the free issues, because every issue has so many mistakes that no one person will catch them all…
(Just kidding, editors. I know, your job is so easy, right?)
I my whole life I was involved in American high tech electronics. Take for example the most successful American software ORCAD, they use also terminal instaed od throw. Probably the terminal is newer (later than 1955), but sine 1970 I have not seen anything else.
DOH!, forgive the finger fault, It describes the operation of the electrical contacts within the switch enclosure. Single throw operates only in one operation of the toggle, lever , push-button,etc, whereas double throw operates contacts with both operations of the toggle, etc. The number of circuits switched is described by the number of POLES,ie. single-pole[1],double-pole[2],triple-pole[3],etc.
What we, your readers, expect are authors who are knowledgable about the subject they are writing about.
And editors who are knowledgable enough to do their job and recognize glaring errors like these ones and either demand a re-write or kill the article. Of fire the writer.
Neither the author nor the editor did his/her job in this case.
I am pondering why I should pay good money for writing I can not trust. On this article, I would have caught the errors (simple basic science taught in high school physics), but for more advanced subjects (DCC, certain modeling techniques, etc.) I might not have - and might have wasted either money or destroyed favorite locos or rolling stock following “expert” advice!
Your responses (on the forum and the one you proposed for the next MRR) are not adequate and show a lack of concern for your readers.
Note I said “would have caught” - I still haven’t received this issue yet! Still another problem with your magazine ???
In case I have to spell it out for you, you SHOULD have stated what steps/procedures/policies MRR is taking to prevent such problems in the future.
Also - can you or anyone explain why posts from certain people do not give the name/identity of the poster - myself among others - even though the Name/Identity is clearly on the line above the post box as I write?
thank you, I learned something new from American English electronic terminology. It looks like that the Californian manufacturers (I work for them over 30 years) invented an another terminology.
No problem, and sorry for my earlier comment, I really never heard anything else yet (also not on pages of MR since 1968), but terminals for switch contacts (there was no discussion about the poles).
"if catching these errors is so easy, why are there so many errors in the posts here, including the discussion in this thread? "
Well, for starters, relatively few of the contributors to this forum have EDITORS…
"I’m an engineer and if I make errors this easy, why do you put such a high standard on MR? "
MR supposedly IS the high standard in model railroad publishing. I pay them money in order to learn how things are done correctly; I can make mistakes for free. Besides, all MR does is write and edit articles, right? Ohh, wait, no I guess they mainly sell ad space and run photography contests… I stand corrected.
BTW on the subject of errors in MR. It is a human endeavor so errors are inevitable. Old timers like me remember when nearly every electrical circuit printed (and back in Linn Westcott’s day there were a lot of circuits printed) had to be corrected, sometimes more than once.
Often prototype plans had to be corrected – and don’t you feel sorry for the guy who started to build before the correction was printed, or who never saw it? Not long ago MR printed drawings of a narrow gage 2-6-0 which purported to finally correct errors in the tender from some 1960 drawings – then they sheepishly admitted they made the same mistake all over again!
I also remember a Soo Line caboose drawing where the caboose was in HO but the windows were in some other scale.
Sometimes layout plans had to be corrected too – tracks didn’t connect to anything.
The classic error however was in the drawings of EMD Fs and GPs – early on a draftsman for MR had made an error in drawing the Blomberg trucks based on an error in a drawing from EMD itself. Once the trucks were drawn wrong, MR reused that drawing for all subsequent F and GP drawings “saving” the draftsmen the effort. It was not corrected for years! And what is worse some of the model manufacturers proceeded to follow the MR drawings and as a result an entire generation of Blomberg truck drawings and models had a serious error.
And the reason nobody heaped abuse on the editor back then was that a letter cost all of six cents to mail. Postings on this forum are free. If each posting cost us six cents I wonder how much “outrage” would be posted?
Dave Nelson
Well said yourself Mr. caseymation, and totally agree, “its a fun Hobby!”. This is supposed to be fun, not rocket science. The last thing I think about as the trains go down the track is whether the volts or amps are going to blow it up. I’m glad Nigel caem from a well endowed engineering background. Stick to hard disks and leave to the trains to those of us having fun.
I don’t wi***o argue with you about this but rather help some put this in perspective. In my field, the important journals cost $50 a month or there abouts, are pre-reviewed by at least three professional coleagues, and reviewed by an editor or two before being published. Each month they publish ‘errata’ for previous articles (fancy name for corrections) and it is perfectly understood primarily because most who read these journals have contributed material for publication themselves.
MR on the other hand comes out for $4.50 (newstand) and is a simple hobby magazine. Are you similarly outraged by the lies printed in popular social magazines and never corrected?
