Re: Theory acceptance- Displacement current?

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Original poster: Terry Fritz <teslalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Steve,

It was a little more complex than that.   We were wondering if one could 
"detect" the displacement current "flowing through" the glass.  Or, was the 
current induced by electron and hole bunching at the surfaces of the 
conductors on each side without electrons actually flowing through the 
glass (that is my thinking)...  But, as Paul pointed out, there is not a 
simple way to make a detector that could separate the two situations and 
provide an answer.  The field distribution and such are the same, so how 
would you know...  Maxwell knew that current flow "through insulators" was 
a rather strange thing to accept in that situation when he basically 
"invented" displacement currents.  However, he also knew it could not be 
easily disproven :o))))  But displacement currents, either way, serve us 
just fine ;-))

Researchers far greater than I are trying with mixed results to resolve the 
current flow thing, so I left it up to them ;-))

Cheers,

        Terry



At 03:29 PM 6/30/2005, you wrote:


> > A few years ago Terry tried very hard to design a machine to detect and 
> > measure "displacement current".  Spent quite some time and band width on 
> > it.  But, no success.  Then Paul N whispered in his ear, "It can't be 
> > done."  Terry immediately abandoned his project.
>
> Gosh! What do you mean you can't measure displacement current ::) Try 
> wrapping a plasma globe in tinfoil, then drawing an arc off it with your 
> finger. Then tell me you didn't feel anything!
>
> There was no conductive path for that current to flow through since the 
> tin foil was separated from the plasma by a piece of glass. Any current 
> that did flow therefore must have been displacement current.
>
> Displacement current is a mathematical fiction, if you like, as much as 
> "centrifugal" force is. It is a handy way of accounting for the effect 
> that when one charged body moves, every other charged body nearby feels a 
> force. When you pile electrons onto one plate of a capacitor, the 
> electrons on the other plate get shoved off it by electrostatic repulsion. 
> That stream of electrons rushing out the back door, to get away from the 
> ones you crammed in the front door, is what we call displacement current.
>
> Asking whether displacement current exists in its own right, in a region 
> of space that contains no charged particles, is a bit like asking if that 
> tree falling in the forest really did make a noise. The only thing that 
> really exists in EM is charged particles and the forces they exert on each 
> other. All the rest is just structures that we build in our heads to help 
> us visualise the forces.
>
>
> Steve Conner