Re: EMF +- battery speculation

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

I wrote:
> > ... There is no field and no flux in the
> > electrolyte of an unloaded battery.

Ludwik Kowalski wrote:
> 1) How do you justify this?

As we have discussed before:
  http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/battery.htm#sec-actual-battery

> 2) Suppose an air  capacitor, whose one plate is Zn and another
>     is Cu, is already charged to X volts, the same voltage it would
>     develop in the electrolyte. Nearly all the electric field flux is
>     between the electrodes. The capacitor is then inserted into the
>     electrolyte. All the flux, you are saying, is now expelled from
>     the region between the plates. What does it?

Motion of the ions.

>  Why does the
>     flux "prefer" a longer path outside the plates instead of a shorter
>     path between the plates?

If you wish, the field inside the electrolyte is zero because
of two equal-and-opposite contributions:
 a) The field due to charges strictly inside the metal plates, and
 b) The field due to the ion pairs that were split by said field
    and have drifted and are now sitting in thin layers, one layer
    right next to each metal plate.

> 3) And is the electric flux distributed when one half of each plate
>     is sticking out; (it is not surrounded by the electrolyte)?

The non-surrounded plates lack the contribution from the
ionic layers [item (b) above].

> Many textbooks do refer to "a non-electric" force (agent) doing
> positive work on ions inside a battery cell.

Which textbooks are those?

> Is this a misconception?

You tell me.  Make a list of the known PHYSICS forces.
Tell me which (if any) non-electrical force is at work
inside a battery cell.  Gravitation?  Strong nuclear force?

> By the way, my speculation was mostly about how the idea
> of a "non-electric force" was conceived.

I think the non-electric force was conceived the same
way astrology was conceived.