"Veritasium" (YT) - "The Big Misconception About Electricity" ?

[snarkysparky]

dunning kruger.... paging mr kruger

[aetherist]

dunning kruger.... paging mr kruger

I am glad u came along. I need someone to give the conventional explanation for the green trace & for the white trace when the circuit is closed at both ends.
And for when the circuit is open at both ends.
And re the purple trace & the cyan trace, for the open circuit -- how is it that they both end up negative compared to the positive terminal?
I will do my own analysis using my new electricity -- & we can compare with your old electricity.

[adx]

Why do I get the feeling I'm getting a taste of my own medicine? In the spirit of Derek Muller's PhD, ere goes...

A lot of "advanced" thinking there, most of which I think I follow, but to me at least some is as confusing as the academic textbook treatments (with their diagrams of imaginary field lines, surface charges, and equations presented as some kind of reality in their own right).
I know it's only a work in progress and won't suggest it needs to fit this bill, but what I yearn for is some kind of description of rational physical reality which ultimately ties in well to experimental and numerical experience.

... gets a 0.3 mA signal from a 1.47 mA current, which is 2.0%, ...

(original formatting) 20%?

Yes 20.4% -- thanx – fixed.
But 20.4% for 1000 mm spacing is mindblowing.  I thought that the 2.0% should have been more like 0.2%.

The per-length L and C of a transmission line does not change with end-on scale - 1m spacing and 10mm wires, or 10mm spacing with 0.1mm wires are the same (scale invariant). But remember it is thousands of km long, and since the wavefront travels extremely fast, within almost no time a very long section of cable (compared to spacing) is 'exposed' to electricity. Even in 1 microsecond a 300m length of 1m-spaced wire is involved, and in just 1 millisecond that extends to 300km of 'capacitor'. So it should be no surprise that it is capable of transmitting significant current. In my simulation on p 18 this is enough to light an 8W LED lamp at full brightness off 240V mains (assuming no radiated losses).

All of the above percentages are astonishingly high. But i think i know what happens.

To me and some others here, these results were astonishingly low. For a properly terminated transmission line (which the arms of this circuit can be) and differential drive (which is impossible for the arms because they are driven with a common mode voltage), the initial voltage and current should be 50% of the steady state.

I am surprised that conventional lumped element models for TLs have not yet been proven to umpteen decimals. What happened?   

I think that's because there is no need to; they are engineering tools which work adequately for practical purposes, not precision experiments designed to test the limits of QFT. 1% error would usually be good enough. Their first application was sending digital data under the sea in the 1800s, and it and quite a bit of electrical theory grew from there. The need to test the limits for new physics probably never came up.

But this isn't what you're asking. It's as I said: The Vertiasium experiment drives the TL models in an unbalanced way; driving one wire and looking for a current out of the other, from the same end. Usually both lines are driven in opposite ways eg +1V and -1V where the current 'through' the send end of the line (ie in one terminal and out the other terminal) is less of a philosophical conundrum. Nothing went wrong. The Vertiasium experiment's looped arms are instead an antenna system which radiates power.

I asked that someone do a TL model for Howardlong's X. Such a model would ideally predict/postdict each of the say 4 stages of the initial transients (of the induced currents)(before the main current arrives). And it could ideally predict/postdict the other say 10 stages of later transients (after the main current arrives)(transients caused by reflexions i suppose). However i suspect that such models were never designed to predict initial transients. I suspect that the models are okish for the later transients. Anyhow i am surprised that today there exist any problems with the application of TL models. Or, are they mainly for amusing skoolkids? ? ? ? ?
Look at all of the pseudo-mini-capacitors joining the top wire to the bottom wire (in TL models). They are drawn with a say 1 mm gap. For the Veritasium gedanken i reckon that they should have 1000 mm gaps. Look at the induced pseudo-current from the pseudo-mini-capacitors, i bet that it is all sent towards the pseudo-bulb, no, i reckon that a half should be sent away from the bulb.

What I just wrote above is one reason why no one took up your request - it has already been determined in this thread. In my kind of tongue in cheek model on page 18, I expected radiation loss, but at the time <10% which is unimportant for lighting an 8W lamp at about the right brightness. It shows the disadvantage of running too far (quantifying) via intuitive feel. The numbers can be orders of magnitude out which is far away from "umpteen decimals". In short, TL models predict everything with 'great' accuracy, but are not an accurate tool to model the Veritasium circuit with, because it works differently.

Schematic capacitors are not intended to depict anything physical so the 1mm gaps are neither here nor there, as I assume you know, but you still want to contrast them with 1000mm to make a point. The point is not lost on the engineers who draw them (Dave, Mehdi, etc), who know the capacitors can take on any value and thus feel no need to draw a 12pF cap with say a page-wide gap on paper. The actual gaps are 1m like you say, the current isn't a pseudo-current (or if it were, there is no means to distinguish it from a real current) and the mini capacitors are real not pseudo (the real distributed capacitance of a TL can be very easily measured between the wires for a defined short length). Yes, half this current does go forward and half back - the transmission line charges with current and delivers to an impedance-matched load in equal amounts.

Enough for now, for the night.

[aetherist]

Yes 20.4% -- thanx – fixed. But 20.4% for 1000 mm spacing is mindblowing.  I thought that the 2.0% should have been more like 0.2%.

The per-length L and C of a transmission line does not change with end-on scale - 1m spacing and 10mm wires, or 10mm spacing with 0.1mm wires are the same (scale invariant). But remember it is thousands of km long, and since the wavefront travels extremely fast, within almost no time a very long section of cable (compared to spacing) is 'exposed' to electricity. Even in 1 microsecond a 300m length of 1m-spaced wire is involved, and in just 1 millisecond that extends to 300km of 'capacitor'. So it should be no surprise that it is capable of transmitting significant current. In my simulation on p 18 this is enough to light an 8W LED lamp at full brightness off 240V mains (assuming no radiated losses).

I reckon that TL theory & TL models are wrong (physics wise) but give goodish results. This (goodish results) might indeed be so for DC steady state electricity (ie after the non-steady transients have gone), & for AC "steady state" (wall to wall steady transients). And now in the picosecond era we find that proponents of TL models (ie almost everybody) are confident that TL models can predict or postdict the initial stage-1 transients (in the first say 3 nanoseconds), plus stage-2 (say 10 ns) & stage-3 (say 1000 ns) etc.
Nonetheless i do want to learn more about TL & TL models. Partly koz this might help my thinking re Veritasium's gedanken transient question, & re AlphaPhoenix's X pt1 transient (ie to test my new electricity). My new electricity is a work in progress, & so far i think it is ticking all of the boxes. Old electricity seems to be ok, in a limited way in limited cases, but its contradictions are ignored (eg how does insulation on a wire slow the electricity). The Veritasium gedanken & the AlphaPhoenix X pt1 have created a number of wonderful new boxes to tick, & i reckon that old electricity will fail (which i will look at at a later date).

So, we can start with one new old box. How does insulation slow electricity along a wire?  In particular, do any TL models allow input for insulation on the wire(s)?
AlphaPhoenix sidesteps this insulation problem, he intentionally refuses to tell us the lengths of his wires (he admits that), he merely says that his half-loops are 1.6 microseconds long. However, his 24AWG copper wires have a heavy enamel insulation, hence the speed of electricity along his wires can't exceed say 2c/3 m/s.
Veritasium sidesteps this insulation problem, he says that his loops are 1 light-second long. However, early on in his youtube he does accidentally say that each loop is 300,000 km, in which case his options should have been 1.5 seconds instead of 1 second, & 3 seconds instead of 2 seconds, but he never corrects his error. We can see that his wires have heavy plastic insulation, but we don’t know whether the remaining 2 light-seconds of wire is similar, which duznt matter koz he has (later in his youtube) specified his loops as being 1 light-second long (if u ignore his earlier accidental error). But he should have corrected his (earlier) error. I suspect that he duznt even realise that his error exists, in which case Veritasium duznt realize that insulation makes a difference.  But i feel sure that AlphaPhoenix knows, & that he intentionally sidestepped the issue in his own X pt1. After all, insulation duznt matter in his X pt1, if AlphaPhoenix used bare wires (with zero enamel) he would have got 0.2 V in the first 1,600 ns anyhow. No, wait, if he used the same lengths of wire, but bare, it would have been 0.2 V in the first 1,067 ns. But i suppose that it’s the 0.2 V that counts, the 1,600 ns is a minor side-issue. But it aint a minor issue for old electricity, it is a box that old electricity fails to tick. But no such problem for new electricity.
If Veritasium realized that insulation can make a difference (to the speed of electricity along a wire), then he would have the mother of all electricity topics for the mother of all electricity youtubes. The problem being that his youtube would finish without having an answer (ie re how plastic on the surface can influence conduction electrons slowly drifting along inside)(or re how it can influence the speed of the wavefront created by drifting electrons bumping drifting electrons).

But back to your comment that….
The per-length L and C of a transmission line does not change with end-on scale - 1m spacing and 10mm wires, or 10mm spacing with 0.1mm wires are the same (scale invariant).
Yes, i am happyish with that stuff, but i still don’t get it.
Intuitively a 1 mm negatively charged wire with 6248 C/m might induce 1 C/m of positive charge on a parallel 1 mm wire 1000 mm away, based on the circumference at 1000 mm radius being 6248 mm (& based on the electric field diminishing as 1/r).
If i hung the 2 wires on silk threads, while maintaining the 1000 mm gap, & gave the red wire 6248 C/m of negative charge, what charge would be induced on the pink wire. The answer must be zero C/m. All that would happen on the pink is that free surface (conduction) electrons would move to the far side.
If i had an earth connection on the pink wire then yes i would expect to see that it was positive (koz some electrons would exit to earth). If there was an earth connection at each end then a half of the electrons would exit left & a half right. But how positive. Surely not 6248 C/m. If it was 6248 C/m then it would logically still be 6248 C/m if i made the gap 1000 km. I might be told that the wires & gap are taken into account when calculating the characteristic impedance. But i don’t want to worry about that today, except to say that i reckon that the old electricity model of characteristic impedance is bad physics.
I am happy with the old electricity concept that drifting electrons are closer to each other due to the need to push through the resistance of the wire, & that by being closer they give us negative charge.

But back to your comment that….
since the wavefront travels extremely fast, within almost no time a very long section of cable (compared to spacing) is 'exposed' to electricity. Even in 1 microsecond a 300m length of 1m-spaced wire is involved, and in just 1 millisecond that extends to 300km of 'capacitor'. So it should be no surprise that it is capable of transmitting significant current…..
Yes, the live wire & a parallel wire act like a capacitor. I see some problems.
Old electricity says that electrons drift along inside a single wire to say the bottom plate (where they accumulate)(the plate becomes negative), & the bottom plate repels electrons from the top plate (& these exit along a single wire), & the top plate becomes positive, & the top plate then attracts more electrons to the bottom plate, which starts a gradual feedback mechanism whereby the bottom plate repels even more electrons from the top plate, etc etc. So, here a TL model should (if it is to have any hope of accurately predicting stage-1 transients) show an initial current that gradually reduces to zero from each pseudo-mini-capacitor (if the leading edge of the primary current in the TL has a vertical step). I will be told that there are standard equations that tell us the charging times (energising times) of capacitors, but i suspect that these do not include an allowance for the gap tween plates (ie they assume 00 mm).
Veritasium has a gap of 1000 mm, & this 1000 mm might in effect have to be crossed 10 more times to give 5 feedbacks (before it is zero), this adds to 11,000 mm (ie 36.7 ns at the speed of light). I suppose that this duznt change Veritasium's 3.3 ns, ie the initial time for a signal to reach across to the other wire (ie to the bulb). But it should show up in the stage-1 of the transient, & even in stage-2.
This kind of delay wont show in the AlphaPhoenix X pt1 (100 MHz scope) but it might show in the shape of the trace in stages-1 & 2 of the transient in Howardlong's X (20 GHz scope)(his gap was 24 mm, & initial delay 80 ps)(reply #1042 on page 42)(i will have a look).

AlphaPhoenix got 0.2 V in (say) stage-3 of the transient, which later rose to 1.7 V. This was for say 0.16 km of enamelled wire out (plus 0.16 km coming back), & his stage-3 lasted for 1,600 ns. I suspect that had he used 300.00 km of (enamelled) wire out, plus 300 km coming back, he would have gotten  0.2 V, rising to 1.7 V at 3,000,000 ns. I don’t think that his  0.2 V would increase with length.

All of the above percentages are astonishingly high. But i think i know what happens.

To me and some others here, these results were astonishingly low. For a properly terminated transmission line (which the arms of this circuit can be) and differential drive (which is impossible for the arms because they are driven with a common mode voltage), the initial voltage and current should be 50% of the steady state.

I am surprised that conventional lumped element models for TLs have not yet been proven to umpteen decimals. What happened? 

I think that's because there is no need to; they are engineering tools which work adequately for practical purposes, not precision experiments designed to test the limits of QFT. 1% error would usually be good enough. Their first application was sending digital data under the sea in the 1800s, and it and quite a bit of electrical theory grew from there. The need to test the limits for new physics probably never came up.

But this isn't what you're asking. It's as I said: The Veritasium experiment drives the TL models in an unbalanced way; driving one wire and looking for a current out of the other, from the same end. Usually both lines are driven in opposite ways eg +1V and -1V where the current 'through' the send end of the line (ie in one terminal and out the other terminal) is less of a philosophical conundrum. Nothing went wrong. The Veritasium experiment's looped arms are instead an antenna system which radiates power.

I thought that a radio signal (a brief almost immediate spike) would be all that we would ever see (in the first nanoseconds), but the AlphaPhoenix X pt1 opened my eyes. The radio spike must exist (made by the passing of the leading edge of the current along the primary wire) but it might be weak (perhaps less than 1 mA?).

I asked that someone do a TL model for Howardlong's X. Such a model would ideally predict/postdict each of the say 4 stages of the initial transients (of the induced currents)(before the main current arrives). And it could ideally predict/postdict the other say 10 stages of later transients (after the main current arrives)(transients caused by reflexions i suppose). However i suspect that such models were never designed to predict initial transients. I suspect that the models are okish for the later transients. Anyhow i am surprised that today there exist any problems with the application of TL models. Or, are they mainly for amusing skoolkids? ? ? ? ?
Look at all of the pseudo-mini-capacitors joining the top wire to the bottom wire (in TL models). They are drawn with a say 1 mm gap. For the Veritasium gedanken i reckon that they should have 1000 mm gaps. Look at the induced pseudo-current from the pseudo-mini-capacitors, i bet that it is all sent towards the pseudo-bulb, no, i reckon that a half should be sent away from the bulb.

What I just wrote above is one reason why no one took up your request - it has already been determined in this thread. In my kind of tongue in cheek model on page 18, I expected radiation loss, but at the time <10% which is unimportant for lighting an 8W lamp at about the right brightness. It shows the disadvantage of running too far (quantifying) via intuitive feel. The numbers can be orders of magnitude out which is far away from "umpteen decimals". In short, TL models predict everything with 'great' accuracy, but are not an accurate tool to model the Veritasium circuit with, because it works differently.

Schematic capacitors are not intended to depict anything physical so the 1mm gaps are neither here nor there, as I assume you know, but you still want to contrast them with 1000mm to make a point. The point is not lost on the engineers who draw them (Dave, Mehdi, etc), who know the capacitors can take on any value and thus feel no need to draw a 12pF cap with say a page-wide gap on paper. The actual gaps are 1m like you say, the current isn't a pseudo-current (or if it were, there is no means to distinguish it from a real current) and the mini capacitors are real not pseudo (the real distributed capacitance of a TL can be very easily measured between the wires for a defined short length). Yes, half this current does go forward and half back - the transmission line charges with current and delivers to an impedance-matched load in equal amounts. Enough for now, for the night.

I am pleased to see that TL models send the pseudo-mini-capacitor currents half each way.
I agree that the currents from the pseudo-mini-capacitors are real. In that they mimic the real currents arising from the repelling of electrons from (along) the secondary wire. And we need not worry about the old argument whether displacement current is real (it aint).
I agree that a TL has a real (measureable) distributed capacitance. Some call it charge, some call it energy (whatever).
I think that a TL model can give good numbers, even if the theory is wrong. But i suspect that TL models wont or can't account for the stage-1 & stage-2 transients of the Howardlong X. But they might if one included some smart elements etc. But i think that it would take more than some smart elements, it would need the application of my new electricity (& the dumping of the old electricity).

[SandyCox]

But i think that it would take more than some smart elements, it would need the application of my new electricity (& the dumping of the old electricity).

Let us know how that works out.

[adx]

Those replies (aetherist) are branching too fast for me to sanity check and reply to in real time. Some passes, some fails. Were I to lob the odd "XYZ sounds crazy coz A<>B" that would feel like adding either fuel to the fire or water to the flood, so I'll take a pass.

Also I'm not the best person to talk to re a conventional understanding of something like capacitance, because I just don't. To that end I'll pick a few "points I wanted to make". A couple being:

I don't know what "free surface electrons" are, nor why they should flow at such extremely high speeds "in" the insulation (I assume you mean the interface between wire and plastic). c/1000000 is 300m/s, compared with a drift velocity of somewhere around say 0.00001m/s expected at ~~10mA in the wire. (That's about 10000000 times slower.) It doesn't sound like you mean a skin effect, where electrons go fastest in the outer portion of a wire.

Free (surface) electrons are my idea. They are conduction electrons that live on the outside of a wire. On a bare wire they might flow at say c/10,000 in air, & a bit faster than c/10,000 in vacuum -- & say c/100,000 (ie 3 km/s) in the (air in the porous) plastic insulation (ie the portion of the plastic touching the copper), which is 30,000,000,000,000 times faster than pseudo-electron-drift inside copper.
My flow of free electrons is not a skin effect, skin effect is inside the copper.  I am happy with a concept of electron drift inside copper, & electron drift close to the surface (skin effect). But i don’t think that such drifts are significant, & i don’t like the conventional idea that electric current is due to average drift or somesuch (hence i said pseudo-electron-drift).
And i don’t like the conventional idea that slowly drifting electrons can bump each other & make a wave that propagates along a wire at nearly the speed of light. Especially as the speed of em radiation in copper is (i think) 10 m/s.

(And subsequent)

Ok, I see your idea is a guess (theory). It aligns with the conventional conception "surface charge" (except for your guesses at mobility and speeds). I've seen respectable references that say for example that the charges in a Van de Graaf generator dome "move quickly to the outside". Do they swiftly go through the metal to do so? Or do they scoot around the surface to the outside, as some kind of rapid redistribution? Similar confusion surrounds Leyden jars around whether the charge resides in the water, or exactly on its surface. It appears you are with the conventionalists on this one, always with incomplete or incoherent mental depictions of some physical reality - which may be correct but all your (you, and conventionalists) explanations are clear as mud to me. Ok yours makes a bit more sense, in that the electrons that do the work are already on the surface, by definition, so they don't have to take some mystical journey to get there (yet once there, they go on another one, somehow, hence - mud). Except how do you explain skin effect if the "conduction electrons" are only at the surface? (BTW the surface charge idea is that only the excess electrons necessary to support a voltage are on the conductor, not that the majority involved in current are on the surface, so I'm not using logic in my argument, but that seems to have long since left the window.) Henry Cavendish was one of the first to dream up the concept of charge moving to surfaces, but back then things had barely moved on from electrostatics, and "charge" had a subtly different meaning (one you touched on; stored energy, in the sense of gunpowder).

In more seriousness, Gauss's law has been misapplied for conductors. The story going something like this (lifted from https://www.miniphysics.com/uy1-gausss-law-for-conductors.html):

Claim: When excess charge is placed on a solid conductor and is at rest (equilibrium), it resides entirely on the surface, not in the interior of the material.

 

Reason: The electric field within the conductor must be zero. If there is an electric field, the charges will move. As the electric field within the conductor is 0, by Gauss’s law, there must be no charges enclosed within the Gaussian surface.

Imagine an infinite region of finite charge density - that will have zero electric field all throughout, plenty of electric potential as a constant, but all Gaussian surfaces will enclose charge. Thus proving the above wrong.

It's all fine until Gauss's law is brought into play: A compressed electron gas will have an absolute potential (or pressure) in a metal. We call it voltage these days. Electron charge will redistribute until the macroscopic gradient of the scalar potential field is zero (electric field is zero), confined by the 'energy well' of the surface of the metal (electrons don't want to go very far outside of the crystal lattice of the metal) for some surface charge but not representing the entire contents of the metal's electron gas. But zero electric field at all points doesn't equate to a region say to the left of each point containing zero charge, when an equivalent region to the right will cancel a flux emanating from the left. This is very much not unlike the same problem we've had in this thread with the Poynting vector vs its surface integral. Perhaps the 'proof' has been confused with using a Gaussian surface to generate a valid virtual surface charge.

Hence this flat Earth we've all been living in (oops, force of habit, on).

Re any dislike for the idea of very slow electron drift being responsible for potentially enormous currents (I guess that's the reason for your surface electron idea), remember this is not up to the electrons struggling against resistance in the wire. They drift exactly the same speed in a superconductor, where there's zero resistance. They go slow because they carry a lot of charge, compared to how many there are, and our relatively non-cosmic use of electricity (as in I've got this spinning black hole, and I'll just put this ring resonator around it sort of shenanigans - we like to look at 200uA flowing down 1km of cable on a farm). They go at a speed determined by the current which we want to flow. I for one am pleased that it is so sedate - rather than some horridious electromigratory copper-splattering mess. Not all the time, anyway.

But fire, water, no.

[Naej]

Imagine an infinite region of finite charge density

So with infinite potential everywhere, and with an electric field undefined?

- that will have zero electric field all throughout, plenty of electric potential as a constant, but all Gaussian surfaces will enclose charge. Thus proving the above wrong.

Nah it's correct: in statics, no current, potential is constant in a conductor.

[aetherist]

Those replies (aetherist) are branching too fast for me to sanity check and reply to in real time. Some passes, some fails. Were I to lob the odd "XYZ sounds crazy coz A<>B" that would feel like adding either fuel to the fire or water to the flood, so I'll take a pass.

Also I'm not the best person to talk to re a conventional understanding of something like capacitance, because I just don't. To that end I'll pick a few "points I wanted to make". A couple being:

I don't know what "free surface electrons" are, nor why they should flow at such extremely high speeds "in" the insulation (I assume you mean the interface between wire and plastic). c/1000000 is 300m/s, compared with a drift velocity of somewhere around say 0.00001m/s expected at ~~10mA in the wire. (That's about 10000000 times slower.) It doesn't sound like you mean a skin effect, where electrons go fastest in the outer portion of a wire.

Free (surface) electrons are my idea. They are conduction electrons that live on the outside of a wire. On a bare wire they might flow at say c/10,000 in air, & a bit faster than c/10,000 in vacuum -- & say c/100,000 (ie 3 km/s) in the (air in the porous) plastic insulation (ie the portion of the plastic touching the copper), which is 30,000,000,000,000 times faster than pseudo-electron-drift inside copper.
My flow of free electrons is not a skin effect, skin effect is inside the copper.  I am happy with a concept of electron drift inside copper, & electron drift close to the surface (skin effect). But i don’t think that such drifts are significant, & i don’t like the conventional idea that electric current is due to average drift or somesuch (hence i said pseudo-electron-drift).
And i don’t like the conventional idea that slowly drifting electrons can bump each other & make a wave that propagates along a wire at nearly the speed of light. Especially as the speed of em radiation in copper is (i think) 10 m/s.

(And subsequent)
Ok, I see your idea is a guess (theory). It aligns with the conventional conception "surface charge" (except for your guesses at mobility and speeds). I've seen respectable references that say for example that the charges in a Van de Graaf generator dome "move quickly to the outside". Do they swiftly go through the metal to do so? Or do they scoot around the surface to the outside, as some kind of rapid redistribution? Similar confusion surrounds Leyden jars around whether the charge resides in the water, or exactly on its surface. It appears you are with the conventionalists on this one, always with incomplete or incoherent mental depictions of some physical reality - which may be correct but all your (you, and conventionalists) explanations are clear as mud to me. Ok yours makes a bit more sense, in that the electrons that do the work are already on the surface, by definition, so they don't have to take some mystical journey to get there (yet once there, they go on another one, somehow, hence - mud). Except how do you explain skin effect if the "conduction electrons" are only at the surface? (BTW the surface charge idea is that only the excess electrons necessary to support a voltage are on the conductor, not that the majority involved in current are on the surface, so I'm not using logic in my argument, but that seems to have long since left the window.) Henry Cavendish was one of the first to dream up the concept of charge moving to surfaces, but back then things had barely moved on from electrostatics, and "charge" had a subtly different meaning (one you touched on; stored energy, in the sense of gunpowder).

In more seriousness, Gauss's law has been misapplied for conductors. The story going something like this (lifted from https://www.miniphysics.com/uy1-gausss-law-for-conductors.html):

Claim: When excess charge is placed on a solid conductor and is at rest (equilibrium), it resides entirely on the surface, not in the interior of the material.
Reason: The electric field within the conductor must be zero. If there is an electric field, the charges will move. As the electric field within the conductor is 0, by Gauss’s law, there must be no charges enclosed within the Gaussian surface.

Imagine an infinite region of finite charge density - that will have zero electric field all throughout, plenty of electric potential as a constant, but all Gaussian surfaces will enclose charge. Thus proving the above wrong.

It's all fine until Gauss's law is brought into play: A compressed electron gas will have an absolute potential (or pressure) in a metal. We call it voltage these days. Electron charge will redistribute until the macroscopic gradient of the scalar potential field is zero (electric field is zero), confined by the 'energy well' of the surface of the metal (electrons don't want to go very far outside of the crystal lattice of the metal) for some surface charge but not representing the entire contents of the metal's electron gas. But zero electric field at all points doesn't equate to a region say to the left of each point containing zero charge, when an equivalent region to the right will cancel a flux emanating from the left. This is very much not unlike the same problem we've had in this thread with the Poynting vector vs its surface integral. Perhaps the 'proof' has been confused with using a Gaussian surface to generate a valid virtual surface charge.

Hence this flat Earth we've all been living in (oops, force of habit, on).

My new electricity invokes lots of ideas (some old some new). One idea is that there is a concentration (a sea) of free-ish electrons on the surfaces of a wire. This concentration (surface) effect arises naturally at all times on all wires because (as u get closer to a surface) there are more electrons pushing (other electrons) out towards the surface compared to in away from the surface. Hence some (conduction electrons) move to the surface. At the same time we must have a depletion of electrons inside the wire. Free-ish (surface) electrons might spend most of their time being free-ish & very little time being orbital.
Likewise there must be an additional concentration (end) effect of free-ish electrons on the surfaces near the ends of wires, because as u get closer to an end there are more surface electrons pushing out towards the end. At the same time we must have a depletion of surface electrons near mid-length.
So now we have two kinds of surface concentration effect.  Here i am talking about an isolated wire, that isn’t grounded. These two concentration effects are what gives us the very concentrated charge at a sharp point.
I said the surfaces of a wire, here i mean all surfaces, outside & inside. A surface will usually involve a metal & a gas, but it might be the surface of one metal touching a different metal (not important today). I think that electrons can concentrate on an internal surface in a wire, ie giving a local negative charge.

Every elementary particle (eg electron) has a charge, & the particle emits an electric field which can be represented by straight lines radiating straight out to infinity for eternity, at the speed of light say. Negative & positive fields add or cancel. I don’t think that they annihilate. I think that a wire has fields inside as well as outside. What we usually consider is the nett fields, & imaginary lines representing nett fields. These imaginary lines are often curved. These lines do not end at a charge, they dont even start at a charge. Today we have experts who think that such lines are real. Even Dollard reckons that an electron is simply an end of a line that has gone adrift.

Re charges in a Van de Graaf dome moving through the metal or scooting around the surface. I think that here we have every kind of drift (inside) & flow (outside) & propagation of charge (inside & outside) & propagation of electrons (outside) at various speeds. If the charge is due to electons (photons hugging the surface)(electons have a negative charge) then these electons will redistribute around on the surface at the speed of light c/1. If the charge or a part of the charge  is due to electrons then these will flow around on the surface at say c/10,000. And during this time all electons & electrons emit an electric field that propagates through the dome & creates surface electrons on say the opposite side, however the propagation through the dome would be at only say c/30,000,000 (because the speed of em radiation in copper is only say 10 m/s). And at the same time internal electrons will drift through the dome at say 0.0001 m/s (ie no help here).

Re skin effect, if u explain the problem then i will see if i can explain how new electricity fits. Offhand i am thinking that free-ish surface electrons suffer resistance to flow & hence they heat the surface of the wire. And at the same time internal conduction electrons resist drift & hence they heat the inside of the wire.

Re Leyden jars containing water, i think that water rules out my electons (which i don’t think propagate on or through water), but i don’t know whether that is fatal to my new electricity.

Cavandish might have been one of the first to dream up the concept of charge moving to surfaces. But i can report that he was followed by Veritasium in 2021 & by AlphaPhoenix in 2021.
At 6:15 & 7:00 in Veritasium's youtube he says….
…. the electric field pushes electrons around so that they accumulate on some of the surfaces ….
…. this charge on the surfaces of the conductors also creates an electric field outside the wires ….
At 17:20 in AlphaPhoenix's youtube he says….
…. now imagine an electron sitting on the wire just left of the bulb – it is free to move ….

My new electricity consists of (or can consist of) (1) electons propagating on a wire, & (2) electrons flowing on a wire, & (3) electrons drifting in a wire (insignificant). The proportions of (1) & (2) will depend on the kind of source (eg lead acid battery).

Re any dislike for the idea of very slow electron drift being responsible for potentially enormous currents (I guess that's the reason for your surface electron idea), remember this is not up to the electrons struggling against resistance in the wire. They drift exactly the same speed in a superconductor, where there's zero resistance. They go slow because they carry a lot of charge, compared to how many there are, and our relatively non-cosmic use of electricity (as in I've got this spinning black hole, and I'll just put this ring resonator around it sort of shenanigans - we like to look at 200uA flowing down 1km of cable on a farm). They go at a speed determined by the current which we want to flow. I for one am pleased that it is so sedate - rather than some horridious electromigratory copper-splattering mess. Not all the time, anyway. But fire, water, no.

The reason i don’t like drift is that it can't explain how electricity propagates at the speed of light, & especially because it can't explain how electricity propagates at the speed of light in the plastic insulation. My new electricity is a work in progress, & it might run into problems re the (too) slow speed of my electrons flowing on a wire, or i should say the (too) slow speed of the wavefront of my electrons flowing on a wire, the wavefront being much much faster, but still much much slower than the desired speed of light.

My new electricity says that electricity in a superconductor is due to electons & electrons on the surface, not so much due to electron drift inside. I might have a closer look at superconductors one day.

[aetherist]

But i think that it would take more than some smart elements, it would need the application of my new electricity (& the dumping of the old electricity).

Let us know how that works out.

In my reply#1052 i mentioned that AlphaPhoenix's mind melted a bit because the currents at both terminals of his source were different. I also mentioned that AlphaPhoenix did not show us the trace for the current at his negative terminal, ie the trace for the voltage through his resistor that sits near his switch.

Pinned by AlphaPhoenix  1 month ago (edited) COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS:
Thanks to Derek at Veritasium for his blessing to make a real-world version of his gedanken experiment. If you haven't seen his video yet, you might want to go watch that for context, and I also highly recommend ElectroBOOM's video on the topic and EEVBlog's video on the topic. Electroboom's video has some simulated scope traces extremely close to what I saw IRL, and a REALLY fantastic animation (8:27) of him waving an electron around in his hand, shedding magnetic fields as it moves (Even though I ignore magnetic fields in this video - I'm trying to think of a test to find out if they matter).
CORRECTIONS TO THIS VIDEO:
The most important thing I believe I ignored in this video is the actual, physical distribution of charge in the switch-side wire while the current is starting up. How much charge travels AT the advancing wavefront and how much charge gets stuck along the wire in between the fuzzball I drew and the battery will depend on the physical size of the wires and how close they are to each other, setting their capacitance.
This charge distribution also DOES NOT look the same on both sides of the switch, although I drew it that way for simplicity.
In a later experiment (next video) my mind melted a bit as I measured the resistors on both sides of the battery and found the current going through them is different.
It doesn't change any of the logic I presented in this video, but it makes some diagrams less than perfect.
It's possible that cross-inductance between the wires contributes to the effect, using almost exactly the same diagram except the wires are connected by a magnetic field rather than an electric field. I couldn't figure out how to decouple these effects day-of, so I'm still thinking on how to test. Hopefully more to come there.
I'm sure there will be loads more - please leave comments about what I screwed up.[/color]

(7d) Similarly to (8a) if Brian showed us his trace for the resistor near the switch, i reckon that the current would have a quick spike & then fall, & after that grow in a similar fashion to the green trace.

So, Brian's X pt1 did a good job, & we are all eager to see pt2. And me myself i want to see the trace for the resistor near the switch.

Would u like to have a go at guessing what his (missing) trace looked like.
And what it should have looked like (ie based on old electricity).
And AlphaPhoenix has shown us his green trace for the voltage/current at his positive terminal (ie the green trace for the resistor sitting near that terminal).
Can u use old electricity to explain that there green trace (it starts at zero V & gradually climbs to 1.8 V at 1.2 laps (time))(trace shown in reply#1054).

AlphaPhoenix didn’t seem to be worried about the shape etc of his green trace, but he was very worried that the (missing)  trace on the other side of the source was very different (i suppose that the current at both terminals of his source should be equal). AlphaPhoenix seems to imply that his green trace is easily explained with old electricity, but that the other (missing) trace is not. I suspect that it is the green trace that is more difficult to explain, but we wont know until AlphaPhoenix shows us the missing trace, which hopefully he will do in pt-2 of his X.

[adx]

Imagine an infinite region of finite charge density

So with infinite potential everywhere, and with an electric field undefined?

Ok, terrible, unrealisable, example. Thanks for setting me straight. I was hoping the idea of zero electric field would come through. A test charge in such a place would experience zero force, assuming nothing else moved. That would break the proof if the test charge is zero, but that is kind of how it is worded.

- that will have zero electric field all throughout, plenty of electric potential as a constant, but all Gaussian surfaces will enclose charge. Thus proving the above wrong.

Nah it's correct: in statics, no current, potential is constant in a conductor.

Yes, I'm wrong. For a constant pressure fluid, the only source of force can be at the walls.

But I bet '99%' of moderately educated people (including me) were mislead by my description (if they tried to understand it) to the point where they began doubting their conception of statics enough to fall back to their education (faith) or admit they don't know (ignorance). Aetherist is righter than me. Maybe it's just me, but "mud" is my point, somewhat unfortunately but I had enough of an inkling to know I was on shaky ground. It's simple as it gets statics. Few people can clearly point out where it is wrong, and why, from a place of understanding.

I'll do some replying later some time, but time for a break

[penfold]

[...]
The reason i don’t like drift is that it can't explain how electricity propagates at the speed of light, & especially because it can't explain how electricity propagates at the speed of light in the plastic insulation. My new electricity is a work in progress, & it might run into problems re the (too) slow speed of my electrons flowing on a wire, or i should say the (too) slow speed of the wavefront of my electrons flowing on a wire, the wavefront being much much faster, but still much much slower than the desired speed of light.
[...]

You're suspicion/dislike is not entirely unfounded/dis-believeable. There are a large number of models of electronic conduction in metals and based on external "measureable" E and B fields, there isn't a unique solution for what the electrons arre doing inside the wire. So long as the product of charge and velocity is a current that relates to the B field, it all works well for the fields. So yeah, its totally valid to disbelieve something. And so far, conceptually, your ideas are not totally crazy - they do however seriously need some quantitative analysis because they just don't add up to me.

How would skin effect at high-frequency work out in your model? Since there is no real evidence to suggest that electro-magnetic laws/theories completely disappear inside a conductor and that they seem to remain valid from microns to 1000's of km scales, they are quite difficult to dispute. Experimental evidence for the variation of ohmic/"real" resistance with increasing frequency would, to me at least, validate the idea that the distribution of current at DC is largely uniform and at HF, largely at the surface. The variation of distribution within the wire with frequency is also largely justified by measurements on conductors made from layers of varying conductivity (think silver plating on copper) where the real/"ohmic" resistance of the wire follows what is predicted for a current of specific skin depth and the corresponding resistance of the layers it falls within.

Would a surface current also not imply a rather significant increase in resistance for conductors with a particularly rough or serated surface?

[SandyCox]

You're suspicion/dislike is not entirely unfounded/dis-believeable. There are a large number of models of electronic conduction in metals and based on external "measureable" E and B fields, there isn't a unique solution for what the electrons arre doing inside the wire.

Will you please provide some of these examples? Isn't it always possible to calculate the charge distribution from the scalar potential by solving an integral equation?

[eugene]

I admit that I skipped a few pages in the middle of this thread, but am I the only one that understands that the electric potential does not travel at the speed of light in copper (i.e. c=3E8 m/s), but only about 0.65 c?

In particular, AlphaPhoenix claimed to measure the length of each of his loops by measuring the time that it took for the potential to travel the loop. But, he used c=3e8 m/s for the speed and got the 'correct' result! WTF?

This entire thread is a shitshow.

[aetherist]

I admit that I skipped a few pages in the middle of this thread, but am I the only one that understands that the electric potential does not travel at the speed of light in copper (i.e. c=3E8 m/s), but only about 0.65 c? In particular, AlphaPhoenix claimed to measure the length of each of his loops by measuring the time that it took for the potential to travel the loop. But, he used c=3e8 m/s for the speed and got the 'correct' result! WTF? This entire thread is a shitshow.

Electricity propagates at the speed of light.
If a wire has insulation then the speed is the speed of light in that insulation, say 2c/3 if plastic.
I have explained on this forum that electricity is mainly due to the flow of electons on the surface of a wire.
Electons are photons, that hug the wire. Hence electricity is indeed light, ie photonic.

But u are correct that AlphaPhoenix didnt actually tell us the actual length of his wires.
And, his wires probably have a heavy enamel coating, ie plastic (but as usual he duznt tell us).

However u are wrong re the speed of light in copper, it is about 10 m/s i think. Not 300,000,000 m/s.

[TimFox]

Electrons are not photons.
Electrons are massive Fermions with charge and spin 1/2.  Being massive, they must travel at less than c.
Photons are massless Bosons with no charge and spin 1.  Being massless, they must travel at c.
These properties make a difference in their behavior.

[SiliconWizard]

Hugging photons though.

[aetherist]

Electrons are not photons.
Electrons are massive Fermions with charge and spin 1/2.  Being massive, they must travel at less than c.
Photons are massless Bosons with no charge and spin 1.  Being massless, they must travel at c.
These properties make a difference in their behavior.

I need to explain electons in more detail.

A free photon (eg light) is trapped in one dimension, it propagates at c in a straight line.
A semi-confined photon (eg an electon) is trapped in two dimensions, it propagates at c on a surface.
A confined photon (eg an electron) is trapped in three dimensions, it loops at c in a small volume.

A semi-confined photon hugs the wire. The nearside of the photon is slowed due to the nearness of mass (as for the Shapiro Delay of photons passing the Sun), & the photon's trajectory continuously bends towards the wire, ie it hugs the outside of the wire.

Similarly the nearside of the photon is slowed due to the action of the photon's E×H field acting on conduction electrons in a wire (there is one conduction valence electron per copper atom)(29 electrons in all).

In a lead acid battery, each individual ionic reaction at the surface of the metal negative plate creates a semi-confined photon that immediately hugs the surface of the plate, while zipping off at c, randomly exploring the full surface of the metallic plates & connecting straps & terminals.

An E×H field radiates from the helical central part of the photon. Some of this field radiates out away from the wire, & some of the field goes in towards the wire. The inwards field might continue through the wire, or it might be absorbed by the wire, or it might be reflected by the wire (which is my preference)(in which case it would radiate out & join the outwards field.

I believe in true reflexion – i don’t believe in absorption by orbiting electrons & then re-emission – but either way works i guess. On the other hand, i think that reflexion & absorption result in different changes of phase, which might mean that one or the other doesn't work here.

In the case of a free photon  the E×H fields passing through a sufficiently large test area cancel, ie a photon is neutral (for most purposes).
But in the case of a semi-confined photon (eg an electon)  the direct fields & the reflected fields do not cancel exactly, hence we have a nett E×H field (an electon has a negative charge).

In the case of a confined photon  (eg electron) the looping photon has one twist per loop & hence all external radiation is either a positive charge (positron) or a negative charge (electron)(Williamson). The internal radiation cancels inside the electron/positron – actually the inwards radiations might annihilate (in which case no radiation exists here).

[aetherist]

[...]The reason i don’t like drift is that it can't explain how electricity propagates at the speed of light, & especially because it can't explain how electricity propagates at the speed of light in the plastic insulation. My new electricity is a work in progress, & it might run into problems re the (too) slow speed of my electrons flowing on a wire, or i should say the (too) slow speed of the wavefront of my electrons flowing on a wire, the wavefront being much much faster, but still much much slower than the desired speed of light.[...]

You're suspicion/dislike is not entirely unfounded/dis-believable. There are a large number of models of electronic conduction in metals and based on external "measureable" E and B fields, there isn't a unique solution for what the electrons are doing inside the wire. So long as the product of charge and velocity is a current that relates to the B field, it all works well for the fields. So yeah, its totally valid to disbelieve something. And so far, conceptually, your ideas are not totally crazy - they do however seriously need some quantitative analysis because they just don't add up to me.

How would skin effect at high-frequency work out in your model? Since there is no real evidence to suggest that electro-magnetic laws/theories completely disappear inside a conductor and that they seem to remain valid from microns to 1000's of km scales, they are quite difficult to dispute. Experimental evidence for the variation of ohmic/"real" resistance with increasing frequency would, to me at least, validate the idea that the distribution of current at DC is largely uniform and at HF, largely at the surface. The variation of distribution within the wire with frequency is also largely justified by measurements on conductors made from layers of varying conductivity (think silver plating on copper) where the real/"ohmic" resistance of the wire follows what is predicted for a current of specific skin depth and the corresponding resistance of the layers it falls within.

Would a surface current also not imply a rather significant increase in resistance for conductors with a particularly rough or serrated surface?

I see that there is lots of stuff re skin effect in wiki, i wish that i knew more about physics & math so that i could understand some of it. I would like to see the results of experiments, but i haven’t found much. Much of the verbiage re skin effect & electron drift seems to be a circular argument. 

Dividing Amps by Coulombs to get 0.1 mm/s average drift in a wire is enshrined in hymns & chants & gets a whole page in the Electricity Catechism. But is there any proof that even one electron drifts.

However, i don’t think that skin effect can separate old electricity & new electricity, because new electricity too includes skin effect.
An electon ploughing its way through the deep snow of free (surface) electrons on a wire would possibly give more heat on the surface than would old electricity. But new electricity too accepts that internal conduction electrons have a roll in resistance, ie internal conduction electrons & electons interact via their E×H fields.
Hence a qualitative comparison probably can't help us much, & (as u say) a quantative analysis might one day favor one or t'other.

I agree re serrations.  New electricity could be tested by using a say wire with a serrated surface.
I don’t think that serration would have much effect on resistance, it would mainly affect distance, ie time.
A threaded surface might say double the effective length of the wire (or rod or pipe). The extra time for propagation would show. And i am confident that this test would be fatal for old electricity.
Howardlong could do the test(s), using his 20 GHz scope, using say 12" of threaded steel rod, versus 12" of plain rod.

Hmmmm -- a threaded pipe might be a problem, ie threaded outside, smooth inside. Electons could sneak throo the central short-cut.
But a pipe might introduce some other aspects that might give us some new info. Dunno.

[eugene]

Electricity propagates at the speed of light.

Wrong. See, for example, Wikipedia.

If a wire has insulation then the speed is the speed of light in that insulation, say 2c/3 if plastic.

Wrong.

I have explained on this forum that electricity is mainly due to the flow of electons on the surface of a wire.

Wrong. With AC currents there is a skin effect which makes the current density higher on the outside of the conductor than the center. But it is not true that current consists of electrons flowing on the surface of the conductor.

Electons are photons, that hug the wire. Hence electricity is indeed light, ie photonic.

This is so wrong that I don't even know where to begin.

Believing that you understand physics better than what physicists have figured out in the last 150 years does not make you smart. It doesn't even make you look smart.

This entire topic is a shitshow.

[Naej]

Electricity propagates at the speed of light.

Wrong. See, for example, Wikipedia.

If a wire has insulation then the speed is the speed of light in that insulation, say 2c/3 if plastic.

Wrong.

Correct (cf. your link) and correct if by electricity you refer to signals and light by EM waves at the frequency you're interested in.

I admit that I skipped a few pages in the middle of this thread, but am I the only one that understands that the electric potential does not travel at the speed of light in copper (i.e. c=3E8 m/s), but only about 0.65 c?

In particular, AlphaPhoenix claimed to measure the length of each of his loops by measuring the time that it took for the potential to travel the loop. But, he used c=3e8 m/s for the speed and got the 'correct' result! WTF?

This entire thread is a shitshow.

It's 2/3 c with plastic dielectric but ~1c when 99% of the dielectric is air. Using the correct method he got the correct result.

[aetherist]

Electricity propagates at the speed of light.

Wrong. See, for example, Wikipedia.

If a wire has insulation then the speed is the speed of light in that insulation, say 2c/3 if plastic.

Wrong.

I have explained on this forum that electricity is mainly due to the flow of electons on the surface of a wire.

Wrong. With AC currents there is a skin effect which makes the current density higher on the outside of the conductor than the center. But it is not true that current consists of electrons flowing on the surface of the conductor.

Electons are photons, that hug the wire. Hence electricity is indeed light, ie photonic.

This is so wrong that I don't even know where to begin.

Believing that you understand physics better than what physicists have figured out in the last 150 years does not make you smart. It doesn't even make you look smart.

This entire topic is a shitshow.

It looks to me that u dont like old electricity, & u dont like my new electricity.
I had a look at wiki for the speed of electricity, & it agreed with what i said, & did not agree with what u said.
Is English your native language?
However i am sure that i could learn something from u re electricity (but it might take a long time).
I am already indebted to u – that wiki link of yours told me that at 60 Hz the speed of em radiation in copper is 3.2 m/s. I have been saying that for DC it is about 10 m/s, & so it appears that my 10 m/s is about right. But i don’t understand how the speed of em radiation is affected by Hz (probably not important today).

But what exactly don’t u like about the topic (Veritasium's gedanken)(energy doesn't flow in wires) of this thread?

[Naej]

If you don't mind reading "old physics" it's here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_oscillator_model
In new age physics, I've no idea 

[adx]

Is this the wrong time to introduce the G-string transmission line? (Or would there never be a right time?)

http://amasci.com/tesla/tmistk.html
http://www.rfcafe.com/references/radio-electronics/g-string-transmission-helical-wave-coils-radio-electronics-june-1951.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goubau_line

Longitudinal surface waves on insulated wire(s), including enamelled. I had to wonder about AlphaPhoenix's experiment at the time.

[SandyCox]

  https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/how-do-you-deal-with-crackpots.562507/

[SandyCox]

According to "New Physics", what would the speed of sound be? Is it equal to the wind speed?