For the past 5 years my brother (A. E. Curzon) & I have failed to get physics journals to remove, from the physics literature, a very serious, universally-accepted, logical blunder which concerns the energy flux, S, for time independent electric currents in metals. S satisfies two equations: div(S) = - E.J = div(ExH) where E, H and J are the respective electric & magnetic fields, & current density. Since div(S) = div(ExH) many physicists also accept the result, first enunciated by Poynting, that S = ExH. However, if A = xi and B = yj we see that, although, div(A) = div(B), A is not always the same as B.

In a metallic wire, energy is transported by electrons, so S has to be directed parallel to the wire’s axis, whereas ExH is in a radial direction. Poynting’s model also provides no explanation of how the flux, ExH, produces heat. (In a more conventional model heating results from electron-atom collisions). It also ignores the axial energy flux associated with J even though this flux is needed to produce the field, H, in ExH.