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Re: Corum's new paper, a "naive swindle"? for Noah

Tesla List wrote:
> 
> Original Poster: gbyrd-at-aros-dot-net
> 
> Hi Noah,
> 
> The term "naive swindle" originated on the corum paper "Class Notes", page
> 10. They say "modeling with lumped circuits is of marginal utility (it's a
> naive swindle!)". If it's nasty talk, they are the ones that originated it!
> The Corum paper is a slap in the face, stating that only "sophomores" would
> consider a lumped circuit model of the Tesla coil. I've spent thousands of
> hours thinking about Tesla coils, published some of my own work (and even
> went through a divorce partly because of it), and for what, to be called a
> sophomore? I am a strong believer that the resonator can be modeled with a
> lumped circuit.

	I have the Corum paper in front of me and believe it is yet another
example of their verbose triviality.  Near the end is a comment that, in
effect, "real" engineers wouldn't use lumped-constant theory in
analyzing TC's.  That's foolish.  Real engineers use lumped-constant
theory when it applies and distributed-circuit theories when they
apply.  Applying lumped-constant theory, including the effects of
distributed or self-capacitance, will give an answer which is accurate
within experimental errors (such as neglecting the effects of
capacitance to nearby objects, scope probes, etc.).

	As for their remarks about TC's having multiple resonances, that is of
course true, but "real" engineers know that already, and know how to
calculate the behavior of capacitively-terminated transmission lines. 
Irrelevant to the basic subject of whether lumped-constant theory is
useful to designers of TC's.  Of course it is, and many of us have
verified its utility by careful experiments. This is a snide remark, but
after reading this latest masterpiece I have the impression that the
Corums like lots of words and titles "and enjoy hearing themselves
talk".  To me, at least, their papers remain masterpieces of triviality.

Ed

Who really doesn't care very much, but hates to see newcomers confused
by all of this "scientific" mumbojumbo.


P.S. Whether or not I'm a "real" engineer, I have been gainfully
employed as one since 1945, and have been a registered professional
engineer (California EE 4793) since 1948.  Have done a great deal of RF
design and no complaints yet.