Re: 7.1Hz, how the heck did Tesla succeed?

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Steve Conner <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx>



> Steve,
>
> What is the location and in what element do these displacement currents occur?

Like I already said, they are a mathematical fiction to account for the 
(experimentally discovered) fact that electric charges exert forces on each 
other over a distance.

All that really happens is: When Tesla fires up his transmitter, electrons 
come spewing out the bottom of the coil into the ground, all ready to whiz 
to the ends of the earth at light speed, lighting lamps, driving electric 
clocks, and faxing the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

But, those electrons came from the topload! Since it's empty of electrons, 
it is a huge positive charge. Opposite charges attract, so those electrons 
spreading out in the ground get dragged back towards the transmitting 
tower, and never make it further than about a quarter mile.

Half a cycle of oscillation later, the mirror image happens but the result 
is the same- The current that Tesla thought would travel throughout the 
whole globe, doesn't. Where is all that missing current? It looks "as if" 
it got sucked out of the ground, through the air, and back up to the topload!

Of course it couldn't have, because air is an insulator, hence electrons 
can't travel through it, and this is where the dilemma starts. Trying to 
actually measure displacement current is like trying to tape-record the 
sound of one hand clapping. We don't have any instrument that can measure 
current in any other form than the motion of electric charges, so we can't 
measure displacement current except by putting out an antenna loaded with 
electrons and letting the field displace them through our instrument. This 
turns the displacement current back into ordinary conduction current, so 
you're not really measuring displacement current at all.

To sum up, displacement current is like Santa Claus. Technically it doesn't 
exist, but somehow, the milk and cookies get eaten and the Christmas gifts 
appear.

Curiouser and curiouser.


Steve Conner