Re: [TCML] Wireless Transmission Theory

[William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 8 Feb 2008, Ed Phillips wrote:

>     I've never found anything useful in their various papers.

Their papers are about physics, not about the engineering of theatrical-
type TCs meant to generate impressive effects.  For theatrical coils, a
lumped analysis tells everything a designer needs to know.

Why should we care about upper-harmonic operation?  That's an engineer's
question.

The concepts surrounding upper-harmonic operation are concealing the keys
to understanding Tesla's "World System."   Here's a central concept:
conductors are made of mobile electricity which sloshes back and forth
during alternating currents.  A TC secondary is much like an organ pipe
for electricity rather than for air.  Knowing this, it's only a small step
to imagining that electrical energy can be broadcast via Earth's surface,
since Earth is like a vast "aquarium" full of movable charges of
electricity.



> Their
> insistence on the use of the distributed-circuit approach to analysis
> and/or design of TC's  has always seemed like a technicality which isn't
> worth the trouble

For a physicist wanting to explain *all* aspects of TCs, the lumped
analysis is not useful.  It's analogous to a semiconductor physicist
knowing Ohm's law or transistor equations: you'll never get a research
paper published about transistor equations!  There's no "Unknown" to be
explored.  New science occurs at a way deeper level than most engineers
ever go.  And most of the time, new science has no practical purpose, so
an engineer would regard those who pursue "doing science" as wasting time.


> since the difference between that and lumped constant
> theory is swamped by thegenerally  unquantifiable effects of streamers
> once they form.

>From the viewpoint of generalized Tesla coil physics, theatrical coils and
streamer formation are a tiny niche subject.  But for the coiler community
they're a major topic.


>  Somewhere in my office at work I have a couple of their
> papers which were presented in the early 1990's at a DARPA symposium on
> Ultra Wide Band Radar.  The papers have nothing to do with radar and I
> don't know why they were presented but the general opinion of the
> audience was that they were 'much ado about nothing'.

Perhaps I'm biased because back in the late 1970s I had a breakthrough in
understanding how TC's work:  I was able to visualize the secondary not as
a tank circuit but as a 1/4-wave waveguide segment with pulses travelling
up and down it.  Years later the Corum's started writing about the same
thing!  Yay!  Or perhaps I'm biased because I'm a scientist-type with an
engineering day job.

Feynman says something like "If you don't know two or three different ways
to describe a pheonomenon, then you don't really understand it."  That's a
Scientist viewpoint, since those two or three extra ways are often totally
useless for any practical purpose.  But they're what physics research is
all about, and if you find a new way of looking at a well-known system,
scientists come running while engineers yawn and roll their eyes.  (I say
this as a BSEE *and* as an amateur physicist.  Scientists pursue things
that nobody understands, while Engineers keep far from those same things.
The Unknown contains engineering horror since it's unexpected appearance
leads to failed products and confused planning... but it also leads to
scientific progress.)




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William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com                         http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits   amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA  206-762-3138    unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
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