Talk:Induction
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Disambiguation
[edit]I've put the most common meanings of "induction" in a separate section. These were the meanings I thought were most common, and the stats tool confirms that they have by far the majority of traffic. Sam Staton (talk) 13:06, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Electric and magnetic induction
[edit]Hello! Recently I edited the Induction disambiguation page. I agree that none of these 5 items is itself induction:
- Electromagnetic induction is not induction; it is the production of an emf across an electrical conductor in a changing magnetic field.
- Magnetic induction is not induction; it is B-field also known as magnetic flux density.
- Electrostatic induction is not induction; it is a redistribution of electric charge in an object, caused by the influence of nearby charges.
- Electric induction is not induction; it is D-field also known as electric displacement field.
- Forced induction is not induction; it is the usage of turbocharging or supercharging to increase the density of the intake air.
All these 5 terms were introduced in the XIXth century for some historical reasons. The usage of the word "induction" in the first 4 terms is somewhat misleading for new students. They often angrily ask me why those very different things are called by the same word. However, these terms were established and still are used in many books.
Of course, electromotive force is not a force. Coercive force is not a force either. Technically, a Guinea pig is not a pig, nor is it from Guinea. However, Wikipedia tries to help readers to find information about the terms they encounter in books regardless of the quality of the terms.
If you insist that Wikipedia should struggle for better terminology, I can add the word "obsolete" in these two definitions:
- Magnetic induction is the obsolete term for B-field also known as magnetic flux density.
...
- Electric induction is the obsolete term for D-field also known as electric displacement field.
"Do you agree with that?"Ufim (talk) 17:14, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
- I agree that the terms electric induction and magnetic induction exist as synonyms for the D and B fields (even if only in historical works) and users might try to look them up. I admit I was not fully aware of this when I reverted, but the question still is do they belong on the disambiguation page. Are either of those referred to simply as induction in sources? That seems unlikely to me, but feel free to offer sources. Are readers likely to type just "induction" in the search box when looking for one of these articles? They would almost certainly type "electric induction" or "magnetic induction" and the redirects would take them to the right place straight away. Having them as entries on the dab page is useless clutter and if my analysis is right, they fail WP:PARTIAL. In any event, you absolutely must not hide the true article titles with pipes on dab pages (MOS:DABPIPE). SpinningSpark 17:40, 10 October 2022 (UTC)