Re: electrical units

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "gtyler" <gtyler-at-drummond-dot-org.za> 

It is not necessary for electrons to travel at the speed of light for
current to travel at that speed. Take a wire: Put one electron in one
end and get another out the other, not the same one.

George
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 1:04 AM
Subject: Re: electrical units


 > Original poster: "Malcolm Watts" <m.j.watts-at-massey.ac.nz>
 >
 > Hi Philip,
 >             I'm sure this could end up being way OT but I'll see if
 > the moderator will let it pass ;)
 >
 > On 4 Feb 2004, at 11:48, Tesla list wrote:
 >
 >  > Original poster: "Philip Brinkman" <peeceebee-at-mindspring-dot-com>
 >  >
 >  > Getting deep in here :)
 >  >    Seriously, though, I always wondered, what is electricity,
really?
 >  >    I have
 >  > heard that it travels at the speed of light...but that is
impossible
 >  > if I understand Einstein's theories...is it an electron mooving
from
 >  > point a to b? Electrons are  particles, even the Fermi accelerator
 >  > can't  get an electron to moove that fast, I just don't see how
 >  > electricity can moove that fast. - Philosophical Phil Brinkman
 >
 > It is not electron speed which equals c, it is the accompanying
 > influence (the electric and magnetic fields) which do. Even that
 > needs to be qualified since that influence is medium-dependent i.e.
 > the best you can do is c in a vacuum where uo and eo are limiting
 > values - in a transmission line for example, both the inductive and
 > capacitive components are larger causing the propagation velocity to
 > fall below c. A Tesla Coil resonator is deliberately designed to to
 > boost these components enormously within a relatively small volume.
 > You may hear the resonator referred to as a "slow-wave" resonator in
 > some quarters. You might imagine a wavefront advancing along the
 > wire, spiralling its way to the top while picturing a wavefront
 > advancing slowly along the length of the coil.
 >
 >       You might like to consider this (a real can of worms but within
 > the world of transmission lines): If you have a battery, resistor and
 > perfect pair of wires (no resistance), connect the resistor across
 > one end of the pair of wires and then connect the battery across the
 > other end, does the current instantly become V/R? Suppose the wire
 > is, say, 1 light-second long. At the instant the battery is hooked to
 > the piece of wire, it has "no idea" what the load at the far end
 > might actually be. What is the initial current? It may be V/R by
 > sheer luck but is most unlikely to be so. I'm asking this
 > rhetorically since in order to answer the question, one needs to know
 > the *characteristics* of the wire line.
 >
 >      Finally, it is not reasonable to ask "what is electricity?" or
 > anything else of a fundamental nature. We can only describe the
 > characteristics of these things in terms of some object or phenomena
 > in the visible macroscopic world we experience. Such modelling can
 > only amount to an approximation and partial description at best. The
 > answer is that "electricity is electricity", "electrons are
 > electrons" and so on. A good example is the old question of whether
 > light is a particle or wave. Depending on how one looks at it, it
 > could be seen as possessing particulate properties, wave properties,
 > electromagnetic properties and so on. That is not what light is -
 > it's just some of the ways in which we might see it behaving.
 >
 >       The view I've just presented is of course totally open to
 > debate, agreement and disagreement (which is why I called it a can of
 > worms).
 >
 > Malcolm
 >
 >
 >