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Subject: RE: conduction current is a transmission loss
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:43:22 -0600

 
Thanks Patrick, very much appreciated.
 
Glad the handbook finally recognizes that current is associated with energy dissipation, not energy collection.
 
Transfer of energy alone, is work-free.  Any source of potential (including, e.g., an electret) radiates energy continuously. The "static field" in space is still composed of photons, and a photon in space is moving at light speed. As Van Flandern points out, a static field is analogous to a waterfall, but not to a FROZEN waterfall. It appears "static", but it is really a steady state energy flow of its component parts all in motion at light speed.
 
Always gets us back to the source charge problem. Any discussion of potential energy in a circuit, potentializing a circuit, etc. is not adequate until the source charge solution (available from particle physics but not in the Maxwell-Heaviside electrodynamics model at all)  is discussed.
 
Best wishes,
Tom Bearden


10 / 11 / 03

Dear Colonel Bearden,

I was looking at Ivor Catt's website and came across this interesting reference:

Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers - 10th Edition (1968) by Fink & Carrol  - McGraw Hill, pages 2-12 -to 2-13

A significant point about this phenomenon is the fact that electromagnetic energy flows predominantly through dielectrics (non conductors). Metals are conductors for current but non conductors for the flow of energy, while dielectrics are good conductors for the flow of energy.

Near the surface of a transmission line conductor, the Poynting vector is slightly inclined towards the conductor's surface, thus giving rise to a small component of energy flow into the conductor. This component of the electromagnetic wave causes the conductor current, which in turn causes a loss but does NOT contribute usefully to the power transmission.

The usually accepted view that the conductor current produces the magnetic field surrounding it must be displaced by the more appropriate one that the electromagnetic field surrounding the conductor produces, through a small drain on its energy supply, the current in the conductor. Although the value of the latter (the conductor current) may be used in computing the transmitted energy, one should clearly recognize that physically this current produces only a loss and in NO WAY has a direct part in the phenomenon of power transmission.

Obviously the last paragraph is likely to cause a good deal of healthy speculation, and you will not be surprised to know that it has not appeared in any edition since 1968. It seems paradoxical to say that the calculation of what is described as a 'loss' can help estimate the magnitude something that is a completely 'unbounded', at least as far as this description goes.
As you say, we are back to Poynting vs Heavisde, and Lorentz's 2 dimensional surface integration of an energy which is '2+n dimensional'.

Given that we have a model of the electron, it sometimes seems that we don't even need an 'energy flux' model to describe conduction current. Surely the 'free electron gas' has enough residual energy to power conduction once a voltage is applied? Ivor Catt goes all the way and claims that conduction current doesn't really exist, but that seems highly contentious. Anyway, on with the research !


regards

Patrick