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Re: non-potential voltage



On Mon, 17 Apr 2000 14:36:39 -0400, John Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM> wrote:
. . .
Kirchhoff's laws are tantamount to making two simplifying approximations:
a) A capacitor is a two-terminal black box, and there are no significant
capacitances outside of capacitors;
b) An inductor is a two-terminal black box, and there are no significant
inductances outside of inductors.
. . .

It is not necessary to place this burden on Kirchhof's loop law. It is
valid even for non ideal capacitors and inductors; eg, it even works for
an open circuit - a highly fringing capacitor situation.

K's loop law is simply the statement that the closed line integral of the
CONSERVATIVE E field in a circuit (taken through the wire interior or
through space) is zero. It is a conservation of energy statement and
refers only to the electrostatic field of the (mostly) surface charges
established during the transient start-up.

This conservative E field exists also inside the EMF device. The EMF
device uses some non-electrostatic energy source (eg: a curly E, a qVxB
force, or a variety of non-Maxwellian mechanisms)to lift the returning
carriers up the potential hill, against the conservative E field; they
then "fall down" that potential hill through the external circuit path,
driven by the electrostatic E field.

The height of the electrostatic potential hill across the terminals of the
EMF device is also numerically equal (in Volts) to the energy expended per
unit charge by the EMF device in lifting the carriers up that hill.

Bob

Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor