The Big Misconception About Electricity


This vid goes quite a ways down the road to explaining why:

1)  Power cords make a not so subtle difference.

2) Cable elevators should not be looked at askance.

 

Regards, barts

128x128barts

Showing 2 responses by apogeum

What really got me was when he says in the video at around 2:30 that the electron flow from the power station to the house is “interrupted” because of the transformers. Well, that’s really bad because it almost looks like he hasn’t understood how a transformer works and that on the secondary side to which the transformer is connected there are electrons in the conductor as well and as they don’t really have to flow but just “wiggle” there is no need for one “uninterrupted” conductor for the electrons to flow. It’s only necessary to make them “wiggle” on the other side which a transformer achieves through the electromagnetic field.

And then the “flow in only one direction” from power station to house and not the other way in the case of AC. Why would the power flow back from the house to the power station through the same wire if the appliances in the house are the connection to ground for the current that flows to the house through the hot wire? The loop is closed through the ground connection. It “wiggles” back and forth including the ground connection .

But the biggest problem for me is how to combine Ohm’s law with the understanding that it’s not through the flow of electrons through a conductor -which still exists according to the video- but through fields that power is transmitted from point A to B (video: 7’-9’).

What would that mean for a circuit in an amp for example considering resistors and their function?  How would they be able to transform energy to heat and thus lower voltage or current where it’s necessary without the flow of electrons in a resistive path? And how would we have to re-evaluate the operation of an electronic tube or transistor in a circuit?

The source signal (music) seems to flow from input to output (so called “signal path”) but the reality is that the current flows at each stage of amplification from one pole of the power supply to the opposite pole through the tube or transistor (only triggered by the music signal) which as a consequence creates the higher output voltage we are interested in for driving loads like speakers (at least in case of voltage amplifiers). How would we describe what happens in an active device like a tube or transistor for example with this field-transfer theory?  

And what about local or global feedback which most amps use for keeping distortion down or increasing impedance etc.? With Ohm’s law  and current flow through wires it can be easily explained, calculated, and practically verified. With this “field theory” I wouldn’t even know where to start with any calculation because even a relatively simple circuit like an amp is a hundred times more complex  than a circuit with a battery and a light bulb.

And if this “field-theory” describes more accurately the reality of what’s going on than for example Ohm’s law based on electrons  flowing through electronic parts and wires with resistance  should it not also give us the more accurate equations with which we could more accurately  calculate/select the parts for an amp? And should all of this not finally let us create better sounding amps? So, where are those better sounding amps today  based on this theory which is already know for quite a while (Maxwell, Tesla etc)? Do the HighEnd cables reflect this already based and built on solid knowledge or are they just a result of trial and error and we are kept busy finding some theory  (like this field-theory) for explaining what we hear and cannot explain?

These are real question, not to be misunderstood as cynical or sarcastic.

Any ideas or input? Did I miss something?

At least this much is clear(er) after reading through  the comments:P=IV and all the rest of the equations is still the same.

".... it is absolutely true that the electric and magnetic fields carry the energy – the current does not – but when one takes the spatial integration over the Poynting vector, it always reproduces the power law P=IV. The fields carry the energy, but the current generates it. You can change those fields in a million different ways and the circuit will behave the same."

That should have been explained in the video  instead of making this big hoopla about nothing really so new and exciting.