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Re: Capacitor charge, were is it?



Richard Hull wrote:

<snip>
>   A charge about an isotropic capacity (single object) in a vacuum does
> indeed exist!  The opposite charge need not reside in the immediate
> vicinity!  The opposite charge is confined to the rest of space.  Work
> was done on the vaccum to separate the charge at some time in the past or
> it would not be there.  The work was done, usually elecrodynamically, but
> could be done mechanically.  It involved two bodys of matter at one time
> or another and a source of energy.   In a metallic circuit, needed to
> determine charge quantity or polarity, we have our nice little material
> electrons to commute the charge about (even though they never really
> move) and make it do work so our eyes can see what is there.
> CAHRGE EFFECT is trundeled about through conductors by the good office of
> electrons which do little real movement!  Electrons can't just be rammed
> into a metal lattice by the hundreds of trillions!  Charge effect can be
> transferred very rapidly though through the material.   The material
> particles in matter likewise allow the charge via coulombic forces to
> react against matter also.
> 
> Charge itself might well be free of matter and not inate to it.  It is
> definable to us only with direct interaction with matter which are a
> bunch of atomic and molecularly locked charges in a lump.  Charge implies
> potential energy only in the presence of matter!   I am not rewriting the
> book on electrostatics, just wondering if the whole business isn't a
> matter of perception.  I, unlike many, don't need to profer a theory to
> wonder about the way things work based on my own observations and
> thoughts about the possible interactions.
> 
> Finally, if something is massless, acceleration itself has no meaning and
> is an absurdity, and thus no force and no energy could result from its
> motion at supposed super-luminal speeds.  The moment matter interacts
> with anything, light velocity and our material perception is the limiting
> factor.
> 
> Richard Hull, TCBOR


Well, the only thing that's safe to say at this point is that our definitions
of 'charge' are very different.  Your definition of charge seems to map more 
accurately onto my definition of electric field.  Semantics?  Perhaps.
For what it's worth, here's my definition of charge --

A fundamental property of electrons and positrons, by virtue of which:
  1.  Electrons repel electrons at a distance.
  2.  Positrons repel positrons at a distance.
  3.  Electrons and positrons attract each other at a distance.
Charges are always point sources, and electric lines of force terminate _only_ 
in electric charges. 

This definition is still quite valid, as countless experiments have verified
that electric field lines _always_ terminate in either a positron or an electron,
without exception.  Alternative theories are possible, but you'll have to 
"do the experiment" that proves them in order to become famous.

-GL