Ohm,Eddy
A magnet produces a vector field, the magnetic field at all points in the space around it. We are taught that the magnetic field is created by the moving charges in a current-carrying wire. Except I don’t believe the charges are in the conductor – hopping and bopping from atom to atom in the metal. In a DC supply, such as a battery, the flow of charge around a circuit is from the positive terminal to the negative terminal (and also vice versa). If there are no charges in the conductor, it means that the ‘flow of charge’ should actually be acknowledged as the flow of the magnetic field.
If magnetic lines of force (induced by an AC supply) intercept a conducting metal sheet, eddy currents are produced. The eddy currents reduce the intensity of the perpendicular magnetic field at the surface of the conductor. The magnetic field has been converted into electricity by the conductor. The conductor has produced electricity by offering resistance to the magnetic field. Therefore, if no resistance was offered by the conductor to the magnetic field – there would be no electricity – and the magnetic lines of force would pass directly through. (So I wonder if a superconductor is actually representing zero resistance to an electric current. Maybe its offering an incredibly efficient resistance to a magnetic field – so that all the lines of magnetic force are converted into electricity????)
Eddy currents are produced in any core material that is an electric conductor. Eddy currents are the root cause of the skin effect in conductors carrying AC current. I’ll go the whole hog and say the eddy currents represent the flow of the magnetic field. In one of Foucault’s experiments, a geared-up copper wheel was rotated in the gap of an electromagnet. With no current through the magnet coils the wheel rotated easily. As soon as the magnet was energized (by a DC supply), resistance to rotation was felt and the copper disk started to heat up. In one experiment, the temperature of the disk rose from 10ºC to 61ºC.
So I’m trying to get this straight. The resistance of the conductor converts magnetic force into electricity. The electricity then converts the kinetic energy of the turning wheel into heat. We have magnetic force being converted into heat. Heat is often dismissed by science as proof of inefficiency in the system, because heat cannot be converted back into kinetic energy with 100% efficiency. Some energy from the heat will aways be lost. Wouldn’t it be great to find a way of converting heat into kinetic energy with 100% efficiency?
http://arc.iki.rssi.ru/mirrors/stern/Education/wmfield.html
http://www.coolmagnetman.com/magfield.htm
Battery Included
A battery is a perfect example of a direct current power supply. Batteries have three parts, an anode (-), a cathode (+), and the electrolyte. Alkaline batteries are the ones you normally find around your household. In this case, zinc is the anode, or the electrode that becomes negatively charged due to the electrolyte. Manganese dioxide is the cathode, or the electrode that becomes positively charged. The electrolyte (providing the ion transport mechanism between the anode and cathode) of an alkaline cell is a strong alkali solution of potassium hydroxide.
It is supposed that the chemical reactions in the battery cause a build-up of electrons at the anode. This then results in an electrical difference between the anode to the cathode within the battery. Apparently, the electrolyte keeps the electrons from going straight from the anode to the cathode within the battery. If you connect a wire between the negative and positive terminals, the electrons will flow from the negative to the positive terminal as fast as they can. Normally, you connect some type of load to the battery using a length of wire. The load might be something like a light bulb, a motor, or an electronic circuit like a radio. Unless electrons are flowing from the negative to the positive terminal – the chemical reaction does not take place. Once you connect a wire, the reaction starts.
I am struggling with the above idea of how a battery works. For a start, I don’t follow the assumption that electrons flow from the negative to the positive terminal (I don’t even follow electrons). As discussed in previous posts, I am far more inclined to believe that electrical energy travels from each terminal simultaneously – not simply from the negative to positive terminals, but also from the positive to negative terminals. Hereby, electricity starts to take on the appearance of a double helix.
The electrodes of a battery are dissimilar metals which induce a chemical reaction. Current theory is that the electrolyte allows ions to move between the electrodes. Outside the cell they can be connected by a circuit through which electrons will flow, but inside the cell, the electrolyte keeps the electrons from going straight from the anode to the cathode. (To make this a little more confusing, I also read somewhere else that electrons in a circuit flow from the cathode through the electrolyte to the anode). It’s here I hope to unmuddy the waters a bit. Sure, we have a chemical reaction, but it’s far more likely that the reaction is not seperating the charges in the electrodes – but rather in the electrolyte? This would then explain why electrical energy does not travel inside the cell from anode to cathode.
The anode and cathode are reacting with each other in such a way as to force charges in the electrolyte to seperate. These seperated charges produce an electromagnetic force we know as electricity. Electricity is popularily known as the flow of electrical charge. The flow of charge is called the current. A DC circuit is also known as a uni-directional flow of electrical charge – but what exactly is moving? There are no vibrating charges in the conductor of a DC circuit (as found in an AC circuit) – all the vibrations appear to take place inside the battery.
In a DC circuit (and very possibly an AC circuit), I wonder if charges are flowing at all. I think it is the magnetic force that is flowing. A force which is created by the division of electromagnetic radiation inside the battery. In my world, electromagnetic radiation is a double helix – one side of the helix constitutes a positive charge and the other a negative charge. The charges are in a constant spin of attraction for one another. If we seperate the charges of the helix, we reveal the electromagnetic force which ties them together. It is supposed there is no such thing as as a monopole. When a battery seperates the charges, is it possible that batteries are creating monopoles?
The frequency of a DC circuit is supposedly zero. But what of the frequency inside the battery? Maybe there are many lessons to be learnt about the vibrational qualities of the electrodes upon the electrolyte. These vibrations, or frequencies, could be manipulated to seperate charges on a much grander scale.
http://library.thinkquest.org/10796/ch13/ch13.htm
http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/electron.htm
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/batteries.html
http://www.howstuffworks.com/battery.htm
(Don’t you love it when you find on the side of the box containing a kid’s toy the words: batteries included?)
Can Comets Be Chondritic Meteors?
I am returning to a few thoughts on comets. Comets are percieved to be made of ice. Meteorites on the other hand are known to be made of stone. I don’t quite understand why these very similar objects in space would be made from completely different materials. I suspect they are not different at all. Perhaps comets are made from the very same stuff as the meteors we recieve. I popped-out to Wiki’s again -
“Most meteorites that fall on Earth are chondrites, which are characterized by the presence of round grains called chondrules (from Ancient Greek chondros, grain). Chondrules formed as molten or partially molten droplets in space before being accreted to their parent asteroids. Because chondrites represent the oldest solid material within our solar system and are believed to be the building blocks of the planetary system, it follows that an understanding of the formation of chondrules is important to understand the initial development of the planetary system.
Chondrites are stony meteorites that have not been modified due to melting or differentiation of the parent body. They formed when various types of dust and small grains that were present in the early solar system accreted to form primitive asteroids. Prominent among the components present in chondrites are the enigmatic chondrules, millimeter-sized objects that originated as freely floating, molten or partially molten droplets in space; most chondrules are rich in the silicate minerals olivine and pyroxene.
A carbonaceous chondrite or a C-type chondrite is a type of chondritic meteorite which contains high levels of water and organic compounds, representing only a small proportion (~5%) of known meteorites. Their bulk composition is mainly silicates, oxides and sulfides, while the minerals olivine and serpentine are characteristic. The presence of volatile organic chemicals and water indicates that they have not undergone significant heating (>200°C) since they formed, so their composition is considered to be representative of the solar nebula from which the solar system condensed.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chondrule
“Meteorites are hardy, and the type known as chondrites are also primitive, dating back to the very early solar system. Chondrites contain a high density of so-called chondrules—roughly millimeter-sized spheres like the one shown here in polarized light—that were flash-melted at temperatures around 2000 K and subsequently cooled and incorporated into a meteorite’s parent object, typically an asteroid. The heating mechanism is unknown but could involve shocks or lightning. Mostly made of silicate minerals such as olivine and pyroxene and of the metals iron and nickel, chondrules are expected to be deficient in volatile elements like sodium. But researchers at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the US Geological Survey, and the American Museum of Natural History say it isn’t so. Using electron microprobe spectroscopy, they studied 26 chondrules from the Semarkona meteorite that fell in India in 1940 and found significant sodium throughout.”
http://blogs.physicstoday.org/update/statistical_physics_thermodyna/
“What is interesting about chondrules is that radiometric dating has put them among the first solids to have formed in the solar nebula. That is, they are the first things to have “frozen” out of the interstellar gas that eventually became our solar system. So by understanding the processes that affected chondrules, we’ll gain insight as to what processes were taking place as solids first formed in the solar nebula which could have determined how the nebula as a whole evolved over time.” Fred Ciesla, http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~fciesla/work/chondrule/
http://www.saharamet.com/meteorite/chondrules/show.html
A lot of people are convinced that the chondrite meteorites formed billions of years ago. This is because they are unable to explain the high temperatures needed to create the chondrules. Surely electrolysis explains the presence of chondrules. Electrolysis would also explain the behaviour of a comet – if the comet was made of the same stuff as a chondrite meteor. With the minerals that make up a meteor, we could imply that it becomes highly conductive under conditions where its salts have become molten. Where perhaps minerals and salts are expended under electrolysis, then a comet could fall out of its circuit with the Sun, and may even become a meteor.
http://dl.clackamas.cc.or.us/ch105-09/molten.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chondrite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonaceous_chondrite
The Sargasso Sea
Each year, about 1,700 million tonnes of dust are produced by deserts around the world and obout one third of this falls into the oceans. In fact, a staggering 40 million tonnes of dust is transported from the Sahara to the Amazon each year. The sand and dust are rich in nutrients and minerals. The dust blown across the Atlantic falls into the sea, where the minerals are thought to fertilize the ocean. Deep within the Atlantic Ocean, near the Bermuda Triangle, lies a sea shrouded with mystery – named the Sargasso Sea. The sea is named after a seaweed which is unique to the area – sargassum.
The Sargasso’s currents are largely immobile yet surrounded by some of the strongest currents in the world. Although most scientists thought that this expanse of sea contained no sustainable life, observations showed that oxygen and other elements were being consumed at a higher rate than theories and models could account for. This led scientists to think there must be some nutrient source fueling the blooms of phytoplankton in the Sargasso Sea ( Carlowicz, 2006; LiveScience). This discovery, in turn, led to the discovery of eddies.
Eddies are the internal weather of the sea – the oceanic equivalent of storms in the atmosphere. The largest eddies can contain upto 1,200 cubic miles of water and can last from months to a year. Eddy-driven nutrient transport actually primes the ocean’s ‘biological pump’ fertilizing the waters with nutrients from the deep. Fed by this unusual upwelling, the phytoplankton population greatly increases, and in-turn, attracts more zooplankton and other animals higher up the food chain. The fate of all that biomass also is important as plankton blooms can remove substantial amounts of carbon dioxide from surface waters, and sink it to the deep ocean.
I am reminded of so many things here. I think of mountains that are so large that they generate their own weather. It would also appear that the Sargasso Sea creates its own weather. The Sargasso Sea is found above the seafloor that is the Nares Abyssal Plain which has a maximum depth of 6,491 meters. As some kind of comparison, Mount Kilimanjaro stands at 5,885 meters above sea-level. ( I’m unsure of its relevance, but I’m also reminded of how forest wildfires produce their own weather)
Then there is the obvious comparison of eddy-currents in the Sargasso Sea, and those eddy-currents which are an electrical phenomena as discovered by French physicist Leon Foucalt in 1851. A magnet moved near a solid mass, or plate of metal, induces in it currents which, in flowing through it from one point to another, have their energy frittered down into heat, and which, while they last, produce (in accordance with Lenz’s law) electromagnetic forces tending to stop the motion. An eddy-current is the current induced in little swirls (‘eddies’). If the waters of the Sargasso Sea act as eddies – what is creating the imposed magnetic field?
Water is a conductor. Salty water is an excellent conductor. The water of the Sargasso Sea is said to be salty, and warm, maintaining a salinity around 36%, and euphotic zone temperature up to 22 c. The northern region contains warm water known as eighteen-degree water that moves outwards along the surface of the sea, allowing it to maintain that temperature year round whereas coastal waters with the same latitudes freeze in the winter. So perhaps here we have a little evidence of the heat generated by electrical eddy-currents.
Work is done when lifting a grain of sand off the ground to a certain height, because the sand’s potential energy changes. I’m trying to imagine what happens as 1,700 million tonnes of the stuff is transformed from potential energy into kinetic energy. We have seen the spectacular effects from the electrolysis of minerals on-board comets – so what could be the effects of mineral rich dust? What effects (if any) does this have on the atmospheric weather systems, and the systems of the sea?
The Sargasso is an oasis of calm surrounded by strong currents; my mind is drawn to hurricanes. The eye of a hurricane is well known for its calm winds, and being surrounded by a ring of towering thunderstorms where the most severe weather of a cyclone occurs.( As a point of interest, hurricanes develop in the southern part of the North Atlantic Ocean).
There are five major ocean-wide gyres – the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and Indian Ocean Gyres. These are giant circular surface currents that sweep around the major ocean basins. Mid-ocean gyres are known as ‘ocean deserts’. Is a pattern starting to appear in connection with the ’skin-effect’ of electrical flow in conductors. Electricity does not simply flow in the core of the conductor, but flows outside on the skin.
Many thanks:
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=10592
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Gyre
http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Sargasso_Sea
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7228081.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_(cyclone)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/blueplanet/infobursts/gyres_bg.shtml
