webolife wrote:R. A. Smith's "Punctual Theory" also says that EM, Electricity Light are all manifestations of the same field he calls the T-Force. (plug for the RASmith thread)
webolife wrote:
Final key question: Is is a good analogy for electric "current" [in a wire], and if not, why not [evidence, please]?
Altonhare said:
I don't think so, since there are observable (distance-dependent) delays in circuits. If the delay were
distance-independent this would indicate an "instantaneous" mechanism.
If there is a distance-dependent relationship in an electric circuit, how do you distinguish the part of that effect that is due to resistance-caused energy "dissipation" and resulting reduction in delivery of electric impetus, and actually dx due to stuff moving?
Higher resistance results in a reduction in electric impetus (magnitude of the signal), of course, which has nothing to do with delay.
Even if one proposes that it could, it can be eliminated by comparing two setups of identical resistivity.
webolife wrote:
Still whatever your answer to this question, you will ask if this applies to the phenomenon of light?
First I challenge the definition of resistance. The concept of resistance to "flow" is only applicable to stuff that flows, duh... but you know yourself that stuff doesn't "flow" through an electric wire. There is a clear vectoral aspect of direction and magnitude of course. It operates like Newton's cradle. Now in your view there must be some amount of dx between the atoms of copper perhaps, requiring the transfer of energy to take some time from one end of the wire to the other? Or...?
Lets just visualize a series of balls for now to keep everything simple.
In this view "resistance" would be the degree of misalignment of the balls. If the balls are perfectly aligned then the leftmost ball (LB) is imparted to the left with identical velocity the rightmost ball had when it hit from the right (VRBi). If there is misalignment then the final leftmost velocity (VLBf) will be some fraction thereof.
The voltage is the initial velocity of the rightmost ball (initially moving at vRBi) ball relative to the initial velocity of the leftmost ball, i.e. just the relative velocity between right and left. If there is a negative relative velocity there is a "voltage drop" which indicates that the rightmost ball will cause something to happen on the leftmost ball. If their relative velocity were 0 there would be no potential and nothing would happen (no current flow). The case where their relative velocity is positive does not give any interesting results.
So resistance = (vRBi-vLBf)
This could theoretically be calculated if one knew the exact arrangement of the balls, but is easily measured. It goes to 0 for perfect alignment of course.
vRBi = K*resistance
Where K is the current, and is a function of the inverse of the aggregate velocities of all the inner balls. So if there is no resistance, i.e. perfect alignment, there is an "infinite" current because the innermost balls don't move at all. Don't mistake this convenient mathematical model for actually posing infinities. The innermost balls are never actually motionless because they always move relative to the rightmost or leftmost ball by definition, so the current is never actually infinite.
None of this "cares" if there is a lag or not. The system functions identically either way.
But now imagine we have a row of balls, perfectly aligned, and we now move the first one forward a distance d, the second one backward a distance d, the third one forward d, the fourth one backward d... and so on. Not only have we increased the resistance, but we have introduced a separation between the balls. We can measure the separation by measuring the lag between the rightmost ball striking and the leftmost ball leaving. We can also measure the resistance by measuring their velocity differences.
If electricity is caused by some such Newton's Cradle mechanism, it should be quite evident if there is a lag or not. We can further test it by measuring the lag for longer and longer series' of balls. If the lag increases then we most definitely have separation between the balls, i.e. a non instantaneous mechanism. If the lag does not increase as we increase the number of balls this is strongly indicative of an instantaneous mechanism, although we still have the responsibility of fully and satisfactorily explaining the observed lag.
webolife wrote:
But what if "resistance" is purely a matter of geometry, and not about flow? As the T-force is [vectorially] reflected about the material in the wire, much of the vector component is reflected toward the surrounding space, which may be measurable as "heat", reduces the electical impetus of the resulting "vector", and we attribute that to "resistance."
This sounds very much like what I was discussing, with the resistance being the geometric misalignment of the balls. The greater the misalignment the more the balls are directed outward (away from an imaginary line through the series of balls), which may be felt as "heat". Of course in the scenario I discussed above the balls will continue drifting forever, but we can imagine fastening them with springs or something so that after they are pushed outward they pull back together.
The difficulty here is that, as soon as they move outward we introduce a gap between each ball. The springs keep the balls from drifting away forever but they also serve to cause the balls to oscillate, maintaining an average gap, and thus granting an average lag in a Newton's Cradle scenario.
webolife wrote:
Now think about starlight, which has only the geometry of its field [ie. the space between it and us] There is no impeding structure to limit the effect of the light on our vision other than the optical geometry of decrease of intensity with distance.
If light is propagated by a Newton's Cradle mechanism then the balls must be perfectly aligned, and must stay that way forever. Indeed at this point we may as well imagine a single continuous rod instead of a bunch of balls touching. Now there can be no misalignment (therefore no geometric resistance) and we have the potential for an instantaneous mechanism. However if Nature conspires to make fundamental entities flexible or compressible there will be a lag. Or if instead of a single continuous rod we have a series of interlocking pieces (like a chain), there will be a lag. There will be an average gap at any moment between the interlocking pieces, resulting in a delay.
webolife wrote:
And Alton, you are still using the word "propagation" which presumes movement.
I apologize. Back to square one. We have a series of continuous balls vis a vis Newton's cradle, but NOTHING is moving. Fascinating theory.
