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SSHS KPHOX wrote:
lead in to the power crisis
I was listening to NPR on the way home and the
said that they were not enough electrons to goaround....I think that is
what I heard but the story did not repeat theclaim! Ah well.
This bit of physics-abusive poetic license also has
been spotted in at
least one California newspaper. We've survived
"energy" shortages in
one piece, but never an "electron" shortage. So
probably the latter is
journalistically s*xi*r. (* = e for the benefit of
those with
prurience filters.) It does make me wonder what is
in those science
textbooks we've been hearing about; I'll bet at
least one of them says
that electricity is made out of electrons.
When I was reading about the direction ofvoltages, I wanted to hear about
electric field vectors applying forces to causethe drift of electrons.
Which comes first the field or the voltage?
I fear I am getting myself into trouble tonight!
The gravitational analog would be to ask which comes
first, the
(non-general relativistic) vector gravitational
field or the scalar
gravitational potential energy field associated with
it. I'm pretty
sure that the existence of one implies that of the
other (unless
you're willing to instigate another F=ma -like
thread, which will, as
you fear, almost certainly get you into trouble with
this NG!)
I'm curious that no one has suggested this model of
a very low
frequency, non-sinusoidal AC circuit (my
understanding is that AC
technically means the signal reverses periodically,
but is not
necessarily sinusoidal), constructed from a switch,
light bulb, and
battery in a series loop. Close the switch for ten
seconds to light
the bulb. Then open it for ten seconds. While the
switch is open,
reverse the leads on the battery. Close the switch
for another ten
seconds, observing the reversal of current but
continued positive
transduction of energy in the light bulb. Open the
switch ... Positive
transduction during both "duty phases" should be
easy to understand on
the basis of DC circuit theory alone.
Repeat ad nauseum and you have a step-function
generator of
fundamental frequency 0.025 Hz. Take the
Gedankenlimit (mangled German
for "don't try this at home") as the lead-reversal
downtime approaches
zero and you approach a garden-variety square-wave
generator of
frequency ~0.050 Hz. Speeding up the process to any
reasonable
frequency (period >> signal propagation time) and
filtering off the
corners of the square-wave to make it sinusoidal
should not affect the
continuing positive energy transduction occurring
within the light
bulb during either half of each cycle. Of course, at
sufficiently high
frequencies, inductive and radiative effects would
limit the current
and the bulb would dim, but it would still produce
heat (if not light)
during each half-cycle.