Re: AC electricity

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

> Suppose the load is a high R wire perpendicular to
> the energy-guiding wires (see below). Near that
> load the Poyting vector is directed everywhere into
> the load. The energy of the field "enters the metal"
> and is dissipated in it. Is this a correct explanation?

That is a "correct" explanation which reifies the "flow
of energy", renaming it "the Poynting flux". It is, as I
pointed out, a physically useful way to consider the
problem, but don't get carried away. In a simple resistor
carrying a current the Poynting flux which accounts for
the Joule heating effect comes in radially from infinity.
Sure, the numbers work out fine, but do you believe that
God in her infinite omniscience, was also sufficiently
prescient that she started this energy flowing coherently
inward toward the resistor at some time in the distant
past - from all sides!?

Let's make a distinction between how we calculate and how
we explain. They are two different things.

Leigh