Re: "Charged" capacitor mis-terminology

[David Bowman <dbowman@tiger.gtc.georgetown.ky.us>]

Bill Beaty wrote in part:

> If magnetic charges were part of the everyday world, there WOULD be
> justification for giving the name "Displacement magnetic current" to
> changes in manetic flux. 
> Charge/monopole asymmetry naturally leads to conceptual asymmetry
> regarding "Displacement Current." 

So a given kind (electric or magnetic) of displacement current needs to
piggyback on the preexistence of the corresponding actual charge?  What
about extended regions of space that happen to be devoid of electric
charge and yet are subjected to EM radiation propagating through them?
In such regions there are neither magnetic charges nor electric charges.
In such a region the B <--> E symmetry is complete.  In this case ought
we to consider a time-varying electric field an electric displacement
current but neglect to call a time-varying magnetic field a magnetic 
displacement current?  It seems to me that neither of them are currents.

> ...
> I agree.  What is an electron but a dandelion-puff of e-field flux, with
> who-knows-what at the center.  The "flux lines" may or may not connect to
> something in the middle, but they definitely interact with each other
> there.  Therefor, look at the flux only, and ignore the electron.  When
> our electron proceeds through a plane, the changing e-field patterns which
> penetrate the plane are very similar to the e-field patterns in a
> parallel-disks capacitor during a current.  When a great number of
> electrons flow in the same direction, their cumulative field is even
> closer to that between capacitor plates during a current. 

It seems to me that when the electron current flows between the plates
there is a moving swarm of field singularities traversing the gap.  When
a capacitor is being charged with only a displacement current flowing
that the field configuration between the plates has no such concentrated
singularities.  How are these two cases similar?

> If electrons are merely knots of e-field flux, then there is no
> corporeality to electrons at all, and a moving electron is not
> fundamentally different than the displacement current between capacitor
> plates.

I'm not sure how corporeal electrons are, but electrons are *more* than
"knots of e-field flux".  They possess intrinsic spin 1/2 angular momentum
(not accounted for by any surrounding bosonic EM field configurations).
They possess a weak flavor (isospin) charge with a corresponding
electro-weak flux of SU(2) gauge field configuration diverging from them
as well.  In the case of the weak interaction, however, the flux is
screened over a length scale of ~2 x 10^(-18) m by the polarized cloud of
virtual high mass W & Z gauge bosons.  They also possess about 10^(-30) kg
of mass.  A moving electron *is* different than a displacement current
between capacitor plates.

David Bowman
dbowman@gtc.georgetown.ky.us