Re: AC electricity

["Bernard G. Cleyet & Nancy Ann Seese" <georgeann@REDSHIFT.COM>]

Thank you.

Larry Woolf wrote:

> I personally like the analogy of the pin ball machine.  The pins represent
> the fixed ions in the lattice.  The balls represent the free electrons.
> When the machine is tipped one way (positive voltage across the resistor),
> the balls (electrons) flow downhill and bump into the pins (dissipating
> energy - heat).  When the pin ball machine is tilted the other way, the
> balls flow downhill (the other way), bump into the pins and again dissipate
> heat.  Note that this analogy provides for constant acceleration of the
> balls between scattering centers (fixed ions) (as in reality) as well as
> the slow and steady drift velocity of the free electrons.

    (Demo. @ UCSC:  balls on string falling through glycerin;  the
string to
launch them separated and in an open cylinder.)

But still puzzled.  True the field supplies the energy, but how does it do
this? (rhetorical), but by moving e's.  The electrons' fields move more
electrons, and so forth.  So I'd say the co. [Radio's just warned me the
failure of the deregulation experiment may force my computer to get its energy
from  secondary cells.] supplies moving e's.  The moving electrons lose
energy as LW explains above.  (in the case of Joule heating, aside:
pronounced jowls, as in cheek by jowl.
-- the Joule family were brewers -- on tap at the Keele Research Association
'till bought out by another brewer.)

< Hewitt explains this very well by pointing out the underlying
< misconception, i.e. that the purpose of the current is to "deliver
< electrons". No such thing happens. Even in a DC circuit
< the electrons hardly move (I'm talking about net motion, not
< the very fast random thermal motion). Their speed is
< about 30 cm / hour. There is an electric field in the wire.
< It supplies the energy. "Power utilities do not sell electrons.
< They sell energy. You provide the electrons."



Question? and how fast do the e's move in a vacuum, a super conductor?

bc

P.s. I suspect a contradiction in the second quote, or am I misreading it.
Hewitt explains .. then ... No such thing ...

I'm ready to stand corrected.