Re: EMF +- battery speculation

[Bob Sciamanda <trebor@VELOCITY.NET>]

From: "John S. Denker"
> Bob Sciamanda wrote:
> > How about the PD produced by diffusion across a semiconductor NP
junction?
> Again:  Are you claiming this is magnetic, or nuclear,
> or gravitational?  Please tell me, what is this
> non-electrical force people are talking about??????
> Maybe I skipped class the day this was covered. . . .

I do not call this a literal force, but it is an *effect* of diffusion
that leads to a charge separation and a PD.  An analog might be the
pressure difference that results across a semi-permeable membrane as an
effect of reverse osmosis.  What "causes" a spray of perfume to fill a
room?  Inertia - momentum - entropic increase?

These are real effects that might metaphorically be ascribed to a "force"
for speaking purposes (I would not do so).

Note:  When we say that these effects are not due to an electrostatic
force, we do not exclude electrical forces from the construction and
operation of the involved structures.  We mean that the result is not
directly ascribable to an electric field directly driving the charge
separation (ie; There is no electric field directly driving the carriers
up the van de Graff tube).

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