Re: Soljacic wins $10k MIT Young Scholar Award (fwd)

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 01 Sep 2007 13:59:35 -0700
From: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Soljacic wins $10k MIT Young Scholar Award (fwd)

Tesla list wrote:

>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:49:32 -0400
>From: "Mccauley, Daniel H" <daniel.h.mccauley@xxxxxxxx>
>To: Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: RE: Soljacic wins $10k MIT Young Scholar Award (fwd)
>
> 
>Why is this so sad?
>I'm not really up on the technology being presented, but what evidence
>is there to show this is nonsense?
>
>Thanks
>Dan
>
    It is sad for several reasons.  Although it's hard to prove one way 
or another this group came from way out in left field [read that another 
discipline besides electrical engineering or physics] and derived 
expressions for the transfer of power between two resonant circuits.  
That much may be original work or it may be merely rephrasing of things 
they already knew - no way to say but give them the credit for being 
honest.  They are certainly guilty of exceedingly shoddy research in 
several areas.  First, although they quote the name Tesla the patent 
they quote is a late one and is not related to resonant coupling of 
power - they flat out missed the correct patents and probably did some 
kind of a name search without bothering to read what they came up with.  
Second, they are apparently unaware that by the time of the application 
for that patent there was already a large and growing electric power 
distribution system in the US and all other countries.  Third, they 
somehow or other found a lot of papers on non-resonant inductive 
coupling of power but seem unaware of the literally millions of devices 
[RFID units] around which use resonant coupling.to get power from a 
transmitting source [coil excited with high frequency].  Fourth, they 
didn't realize that the phenomenon they discuss was demonstrated 
publicly by Oliver Lodge as far ago as 1889, more recently by Tesla in 
both New York and at Colorado Springs.  Fifth, they didn't discover that 
the subject of resonant coupling was analyzed thoroughly by Paul Drude 
at the turn of the 20th century and that the expressions they come up 
with can be shown to be identical to the ones he derived.  Sixth, they 
didn't discover that the subject and exactly equivalent equations are 
covered in just about every textbook or handbook on wireless or radio  
engineering published since 1906.  Seventh, they didn't discover that 
just about every radio transmitter ever built uses an identical system 
to couple the output to the antenna.  Pictures from before 1910 show 
arrangements of coils essentially identical to theirs.  The list goes on 
and on and on.

    Unfortunately they have somehow generated a lot of interest among 
"science writers" [people who know a lot of scientific sounding words 
but don't know anything about the topics they cover] and has gained 
publicity seeming to offer hope of something useful which simply can 
never be.  The wording is arcane and contrived in every sense, almost as 
if they are trying to disguise what they are writing about so that an 
informed reader will somehow thing the work is new.  Beyond that, they 
call their transfer equipment "non-radiative" when in fact it radiates 
plenty and would cause intolerable interference is allowed to operate.  
Furthermore they imply that somehow the relative geometry of transmitter 
and receiver is relatively unimportant, a bad and misleading statement.

    Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about the whole affair is that 
such a prestigious outfit as MIT has, collectively, made a fool of 
itself over and over again.  This subject has been discussed on several 
mail lists on at least three continents and has been the source of great 
amusement and disbelief in the engineering and physics departments of at 
least three universities.

Ed

This horse should be really dead by know but somehow or other it seems 
to keep kicking in the public press..........................