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

[adx]

No, it can stay like that.

[aetherist]

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.

Beaty always has lots of good stuff in his stuff.
Enamel slows my electons (photons hugging the surface of the wire). Hence the slowed electons would be less likely to detach on the outsides of bends in the G-string wire.
I suppose that detaching might be related to centrifugal force effects, because photons (eg electons) have mass (contrary to what conventional science says).
And, as electons have a negative charge, they will tend to concentrate on the outside of any bend (due to repulsion), & the outside of a bend is where the detaching problem must be most critical. Especially if the wire duznt have a smooth surface. Polishing the wire at bends would help, ie before painting with enamel.

But i want to introduce a new (tautology alert) property/trick of electons. Look at a sharp 90 deg bend in a wire.
An electon going around the bend along the outside will (if it duznt detach) go ahead along the new leg ok.
An electon approaching that bend going along the middle of the wire, ie halfway tween inside radius & outside radius, will find that by going straight ahead it will do a u-turn, & will find itself going back the way it came, albeit on the opposite middle of the wire. It has done a u-turn. Conventional science calls this a reflexion. No, electons dont reflect (here), they do u-turns.
Actually, its the surface that has done the u-turn, electons go straight ahead (or so they think).

U-turns are more obvious at the ends of wires. Here again, it aint a reflexion, its a u-turn.

At a new lead acid battery, sitting on the shelf at the store, the negative lead plate & lead strap & lead terminal are covered with electons roaming the surfaces, doing u-turns at ends & edges etc.
If u connect a wire to the negative terminal then the electons will cover  the surface of the wire, up to the end of the wire, where there might be a switch.
When the switch is suddenly closed (ie to connect to another wire) then electons at the switch will then enter the new wire with zero delay, they dont have to come from the battery itself.

In Veritasium's gedanken the 1/c time has to be based on the gap tween the switch & his bulb, not the distance tween the parallel wires.
I hope that readers here are starting to see how my new electricity ticks all of the boxes.

[aetherist]

No wave of any kind can propagate at a velocity of any kind unless the medium moves at least briefly at that velocity or more.

How does a wave travel at its normal velocity when amplitude is reduced indefinitely?

I dont understand. But i am talking about longi (axial) velocity not normal (transverse) velocity.

A stick. Quite a long stick. Poke at something fairly rigidly fixed but moves a little. Time how long it takes from pushing until the movement reaches the other end. Now this is complicated by the slowness of the motion needed to demonstrate that slow movement of the medium is translated to fast effect at the far end, but you could time it from peak to peak, or look for a percentage rise at the leading edge. Or simply calculate the max velocity of the medium and expected arrival time of the effect from the statement that the propagation velocity cannot exceed that of the medium's peak velocity. But that may be unsatisfying because it removes the stick from the system.

That's why I asked the question I did: Halve the amplitude of your poking, which halves the peak velocity of the medium. Does it reduce the propagation velocity? No. Ok halve it again, until you see the propagation velocity slow as you predict (when the medium is moving too slowly to support the propagation velocity you first saw). At some point the signal will become lost in noise or measurement precision, but until that point, conventional wave theory says the propagation velocity will not change in a linear medium like a stick. There is no identifiable point where it slows, down to (nearly) zero medium velocity.

Your idea might have more relevance when the propagation velocity is the speed of light.

AlphaPhoenix has a youtube that shows that tapping a 3 ft steel rod gives a shock wave that travels at the extensional speed of sound in steel ie 5180 m/s, a little slower than the longitudinal speed of sound of 5940 m/s.
And, the first signal that gets to the far end is a pulling tension, koz the shock wave for a thin rod includes a widening due to the transverse contribution of the Poisson Ratio – followed a little later by the compression.

Anyhow, i am thinking that your stick would be much the same. It must have 2 speeds of sound.
And in addition the speeds would depend on the direction of the grain etc.
Anyhow i can't see how the speed of a poke could exceed the speed of sound.

This speed stuff concerns the old electricity model of the speed of electricity due to drifting electrons.
And it concerns my new electricity model for the speed of electricity due to the flow of electrons on the surface of a wire.
But it does not concern my new electricity model for the speed of electricity due to the propagation of electons hugging the surface of a wire.

However i don’t yet know of any need for my surface electrons to flow very fast, or i should say for their wavefront to propagate very fast, ie c/10,000 might be ok koz my surface electrons play (i think) a minor part in my new electricity, while my electons play (i think) a major part (& they propagate at the speed of photons)(koz they are photons).
Old electricity duznt work if it has only c/10,000, it has to have the full monty, c/1.

We should find out whether c/10,000 is ok (for my new [surface electrons] electricity) when we get around to properly examining the scope traces for the AlphaPhoenix X pt1 & later pt2, & the Howardlong X especially.
I am sort of getting around to that, almost did it today, koz the power was off all morning hence i couldnt reply to the blogs, but i fell asleep -- mightbe i will do it tomorrow.

[adx]

I hope that readers here are starting to see how my new electricity ticks all of the boxes.

Yes, the G-string result has parallels with your theory (which is why I posted it).

I see some inconsistency in your descriptions. If an electon has difficulty clinging to an extremely mild curve in a G-line, then what makes some happily navigate a sharp 90 deg bend? "if it duznt detach" isn't an answer, it is a question. Also you posited that electons are photons which travel (primarily?) on the outside of conductors, because EM travels at ~10m/s in copper if I got that right. In which case, your "reflexion" description describes surface electons either progressing around the corner or radiating away, but inner electons always reflect (at 10m/s).

How do you explain a reflection of spacetime ("its the surface that has done the u-turn") if you deny 'Einsteinian' time contraction?

Maybe your theory does tick all of the boxes (I'm not implying I think it does), but what it is also doing is adding mystery, like why electons roam around on the surfaces of battery plates while sitting in the shop, not slowly, but at the speed of light. That is an awful lot of activity for something which appears for all intents and purposes to be static, again the question is not whether they do (in the theory they do), but why they should want to - a good reason for being, beyond being an option which seems to make sense to some people in certain settings (our complaint over the Poynting vector). What this ticked box adds to human 'knowledge' is a question. Each postulate also exists without quantified links to reality (measurement). By that I mean the numerical behaviour which explains (accurately) things like how many electons peel off the wire under defined circumstances. In time this would achieve predictive power beyond being a rough mental crutch to help think through physics situations. In spite of all this box ticking, the mystery quotient is increasing in an unbounded way.

For all its deep mystery (which equates to perhaps an inability to tick a box), conventional electricity theory does make good 'reasons for being' for nearly everything (electrons drift because of electric field and carry potential energy around, skin effect results from inductance and resistance). It also ties all this behaviour together with extremely robust predictive capability which works to "umpteen decimals" (much more accurate than you seem to think), being formulated in terms of mathematics more than thoughts. In that respect its inventors went for the jugular, being all hopped up on science, as was the fashion of the day. It perhaps lacked some imagination.

To that end, continuing on from my earlier post about Popper falsifiability, a good ideal to shoot for might be for half your ideas to fail: Much less, could mean you are either being too unimaginative, or testing too little (or combination).

[adx]

No wave of any kind can propagate at a velocity of any kind unless the medium moves at least briefly at that velocity or more.

Anyhow i can't see how the speed of a poke could exceed the speed of sound.

?

[aetherist]

https://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfVibrationsAndWavesH.J.Pain/page/n15/mode/2up

That looks to be a dy/dt transverse particle velocity, not a dx/dt.

Exactly! The particle and wave velocities are not equal.
" The particle velocity ... is therefore given as the product of the wave velocity...and the gradient of the wave profile preceded by a negative sign for a right-going wave..."
I suggest that you read the whole chapter. Its quite an eye opener.

Yes, a slow transverse wave can in a say stiff bar propagate longitudinally very fast.
It might be possible to invoke that kind of relationship for em radiation for electricity along a wire. Probably can't be done. A generator would have to give electrons a transverse say up'n'down motion. Or perhaps a generator would have to give electrons a spin or a precession or nutation whereby the electron could be static or in a slow uniform motion but the precession etc might propagate at the speed of light. Interesting.

[SandyCox]

https://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfVibrationsAndWavesH.J.Pain/page/n15/mode/2up

That looks to be a dy/dt transverse particle velocity, not a dx/dt.

Exactly! The particle and wave velocities are not equal.
" The particle velocity ... is therefore given as the product of the wave velocity...and the gradient of the wave profile preceded by a negative sign for a right-going wave..."
I suggest that you read the whole chapter. Its quite an eye opener.

Yes, a slow transverse wave can in a say stiff bar propagate longitudinally very fast.
It might be possible to invoke that kind of relationship for em radiation for electricity along a wire. Probably can't be done. A generator would have to give electrons a transverse say up'n'down motion. Or perhaps a generator would have to give electrons a spin or a precession or nutation whereby the electron could be static or in a slow uniform motion but the precession etc might propagate at the speed of light. Interesting.

I suggest that you also read the next chapter on longitudinal waves.

The speed at which an electromagnetic wave propagates is not the same as the electron drift speed. The wave can propagate without the presence of electrons. That's how sunlight reaches the earth.

[aetherist]

https://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfVibrationsAndWavesH.J.Pain/page/n15/mode/2up

That looks to be a dy/dt transverse particle velocity, not a dx/dt.

Exactly! The particle and wave velocities are not equal.
" The particle velocity ... is therefore given as the product of the wave velocity...and the gradient of the wave profile preceded by a negative sign for a right-going wave..."
I suggest that you read the whole chapter. Its quite an eye opener.

Yes, a slow transverse wave can in a say stiff bar propagate longitudinally very fast.
It might be possible to invoke that kind of relationship for em radiation for electricity along a wire. Probably can't be done. A generator would have to give electrons a transverse say up'n'down motion. Or perhaps a generator would have to give electrons a spin or a precession or nutation whereby the electron could be static or in a slow uniform motion but the precession etc might propagate at the speed of light. Interesting.

I suggest that you also read the next chapter on longitudinal waves.
The speed at which an electromagnetic wave propagates is not the same as the electron drift speed. The wave can propagate without the presence of electrons. That's how sunlight reaches the earth.

Photons (eg sunlight) are not an em rolling wave. Nothing is. There is no rolling. E×H is always a fixed slab. Hertz was wrong. Maxwell might have been wrong too (i don’t remember what he said exactly).

1. Old electricity has it that drifting electrons produce an electric wave that propagates at almost c/1. I think that a mechanical Newtonian analysis (for electrons bumping electrons) would show a wave speed less than  c/100,000,000.
2. Electrons have mass, ie inertia, hence high speed (see (3)) would need a lot of energy.
3. A simple longitudinal wave (electrons bumping electrons) requires that the particles producing the simple wave each move at at least the speed of the wave, at least briefly, for at least a small distance (see (2)).
4. The speed of em radiation in Cu is 3.2 m/s for AC of 60 Hertz (says wiki). I have been saying that the speed is about 10 m/s for DC.   3.2 m/s is nearnuff  c/100,000,000. Electrons bump electrons via their em radiation, hence how can a wave propagate faster than their (bumping) radiation?
5. A drift speed of 0.0001 m/s is  c/300,000,000,000. However i recognise that a slow drift speed does not rule out the possibility of a very very fast wave.
6. Free-ish conduction electrons will already have lots of speed (due to temperature etc) even when their drift speed is zero m/s.  Hence drift speed requires additional energy. U know what i mean.
7. The drift path of free-ish conduction electrons will not be directly along a wire, a tortuous 3D internal path might double the path distance along a wire, if so then the electron-to-electron bumping wave would need to propagate at 2c/1 along the tortuous long route if it is to give c/1 along the direct route.
8. Drifting electrons it is said suffer a resistance to their drift, resulting in electrical resistance, resulting in heat. Any such loss/resistance will affect the speed of the wave.
9. And we can add that old electricity has no good explanation re how painting some enamel on a bare wire slows the electricity from c/1 for the bare wire down to  2c/3 for the enamelled wire.
10. And after someone shows that producing a screw thread on the surface of a wire slows the electricity then old electricity will have no good explanation for that either.
11. Re (10), i suggest that Dave do the X before Derek or Brian or Mehdi does it. Howardlong with his 20 GHz scope could do it with a 12" threaded rod.

[eugene]

Consider this: we take a pipe and stuff it full of marbles so that there is no room for any more.

Now stuff another marble in one end. What happens? Obviously an identical marble pops out the other end.

How long was the delay between when the first marble was stuffed in and the other one popped out? Don't need an exact number; was it fast or slow?

If you continuously stuff marbles in one end, what's the drift velocity of the marbles? How does this compare to the speed that the information got from one end of the pipe to the other?

[aetherist]

I hope that readers here are starting to see how my new electricity ticks all of the boxes.

Yes, the G-string result has parallels with your theory (which is why I posted it).
I see some inconsistency in your descriptions. If an electon has difficulty clinging to an extremely mild curve in a G-line, then what makes some happily navigate a sharp 90 deg bend? "if it duznt detach" isn't an answer, it is a question.

A 180 deg u-turn around a wire of radius R (ie at a sharp bend in the wire) would be more drastic for an electon than a 90 deg turn along a radius of R (ie to follow the surface of a 90 deg sharp bend in a wire)(depending on the exact 3D geometry of the u-turn or bend).
Actually i reckon that microscopic grooves & scratches etc would be critical.
Painting enamel on the wire to slow the electons to 2c/3 (to reduce the % escaping at bends) seems to be logical.
But i reckon that they should have used fatter wire, to reduce the crowding of the electons, ie to reduce the repulsions that give a concentration of (negatively charged) electons on the outside of their (slight) bends. Perhaps they explain why they use thin wires. It might be so that they can more easily tighten the wire to reduce their (slight) bends.

Also you posited that electons are photons which travel (primarily?) on the outside of conductors, because EM travels at ~10m/s in copper if I got that right. In which case, your "reflexion" description describes surface electons either progressing around the corner or radiating away, but inner electons always reflect (at 10m/s).

Electons hug the outside of a wire, whilst propagating at the speed of light.
But electons can hug the surfaces of voids inside a wire if the wire is porous (if the electon has somehow managed to enter the wire, ie from its natural location on the outside surface of the wire). In which case for sure the internal electon might be slowed by whatever it is that slows em radiation, especially if the void is very narrow.

Electons might be able to reflect in certain situations, ie like an ordinary free photon. But i reckon that electons don’t reflect at bends in a wire or at loads (resistances)  in a wire, electons do u-turns, or what i mean is that the surface does a u-turn (electons go straight ahead as usual). When i say straight ahead i need to add that electons being negatively charged can be guided somewhat by outside influences (by electric fields). And i suppose by magnetic fields, i havnt thought about that (i will have to have a think).
If em radiation is called electromagnetic radiation then perhaps i should call electric fields electro fields. Yes, i might do that from now on.

How do you explain a reflection of spacetime ("its the surface that has done the u-turn") if you deny 'Einsteinian' time contraction?

All of Einstein's Relativity is rubbish. His spacetime is rubbish (actually i don’t think that he believed in spacetime either).
But i don’t see how Einsteinian time dilation rears its ugly head in old electricity. Or in reflexion.

Maybe your theory does tick all of the boxes (I'm not implying I think it does), but what it is also doing is adding mystery, like why electons roam around on the surfaces of battery plates while sitting in the shop, not slowly, but at the speed of light. That is an awful lot of activity for something which appears for all intents and purposes to be static, again the question is not whether they do (in the theory they do), but why they should want to - a good reason for being, beyond being an option which seems to make sense to some people in certain settings (our complaint over the Poynting vector).

Electons are photons. All photons propagate at the speed of light. They can do no other.
Electons roam the surface of the negative battery terminal, in effect for ever, they don’t suffer any energy loss (i think).

What this ticked box adds to human 'knowledge' is a question. Each postulate also exists without quantified links to reality (measurement). By that I mean the numerical behaviour which explains (accurately) things like how many electons peel off the wire under defined circumstances. In time this would achieve predictive power beyond being a rough mental crutch to help think through physics situations. In spite of all this box ticking, the mystery quotient is increasing in an unbounded way.

I don’t think that we have any good info re when electons peel off a G-string wire & when they don’t.
If u want a prediction, then how about my prediction that electricity goes slower when a wire has a screw thread on its surface. This is explained by electons having to propagate further up'n'down over the threads.

If u want a numerical postdiction, then how about when a capacitor is discharged the discharge has half of the theoretical voltage for twice the theoretical time. This is explained by my electons roaming all of the surfaces. Electons going away (ie a half of all of the electons) have to do a u-turn to come back. Hence half the voltage for twice the time. What better proof (or at least confirmation) for my electons would anyone want.

For all its deep mystery (which equates to perhaps an inability to tick a box), conventional electricity theory does make good 'reasons for being' for nearly everything (electrons drift because of electric field and carry potential energy around, skin effect results from inductance and resistance). It also ties all this behaviour together with extremely robust predictive capability which works to "umpteen decimals" (much more accurate than you seem to think), being formulated in terms of mathematics more than thoughts. In that respect its inventors went for the jugular, being all hopped up on science, as was the fashion of the day. It perhaps lacked some imagination.

To that end, continuing on from my earlier post about Popper falsifiability, a good ideal to shoot for might be for half your ideas to fail: Much less, could mean you are either being too unimaginative, or testing too little (or combination).

Old electricity fails in so many ways.
I already mentioned that it is 100% out for predicting the discharge voltage of a capacitor.
I already mentioned that it is 100% out for predicting the discharge time for a capacitor.
I already mentioned that it is 50% out for predicting the speed of electricity along an enamelled wire.

But i don’t agree re ideas failing, i reckon that every box has to be ticked, one strike & new electricity is out.

But perhaps it would not be out.
After all, old electricity (electron drift) has been around since electrons were discovered or invented in 1897, & it fails to tick many boxes, but has been handy anyhow.
So, if new electricity fails to tick a box then we could still use it or parts of it until something better comes along. Thats the way it has always been & ever will be.

[aetherist]

Consider this: we take a pipe and stuff it full of marbles so that there is no room for any more.
Now stuff another marble in one end. What happens? Obviously an identical marble pops out the other end.
How long was the delay between when the first marble was stuffed in and the other one popped out? Don't need an exact number; was it fast or slow?
If you continuously stuff marbles in one end, what's the drift velocity of the marbles? How does this compare to the speed that the information got from one end of the pipe to the other?

That is a good analogy for the theoretical speed of electricity due to drifting electrons, ie due to electrons being injected into one end of a wire.
I don’t think that i have ever seen a calculation for the faux-speed of (old) electricity, but it would come out to about c/100,000,000.
The delay for a marble popping out would be at least as long as the delay of a sound wave in a glass marble.
Google says that the speed of sound in glass is 2380 m/s or as much as 3962 m/s.
I think the delay for marbles would be say double the delay for a long solid glass cylinder. But lets say that the speed is 3 km/s, that is c/100,000.
If u used a copper pipe for the marbles, & if u injected an (old electricity) electron into the pipe at the same time as u injected a marble, then the two waves would race along at say 3 m/s & 3 km/s, & the faux-delay for the (old) electricity would be 1000 times the delay for the marble.
Interesting.

The drift speed of the marbles & the faux-drift-speed of the (old electricity) electrons would not affect this result.

But lets have a look at new electricity. We don’t inject an electron into the copper, we inject an electon onto the surface of the pipe. The electon hopefully goes straight along the pipe, at c/1 (if there aint much oxide corrosion on the pipe), in which case when the electon reaches the end of the pipe it will have a delay of 1/100,000th  of the delay for the marble(s), & 1/100,000,000th of the faux-delay for the old electricity electrons.

[Alex Eisenhut]

I need to explain electons in more detail.

But not the detail of how to spell them. Is English your native language? Are you related to Electrodacus by any chance?

[aetherist]

I need to explain electons in more detail.

But not the detail of how to spell them. Is English your native language? Are you related to Electrodacus by any chance?

When i gave the name Electon to my semi-confined photons that hug wires (my new electricity) i knew that that name would be problematical.
If u google "electon electricity" u get 117,000 results, most of them due to errors in spelling electrons (papers re electrons seem to have one such spelling error somewhere).
And the rest of the results relate to some companies or rockbands or cartoon character or items etc named Electon.

Perhaps i should have gone with Photron, my second choice.
Yikes, i just then googled "photron" & i got 853,000 results.

Mightbe its not too late to find a better name.
Lemmeseenow.  Heaviside is my hero. So, Heavitons. 284 results.
Heaviside says that the electric energy current surrounding a wire was thought to be due to the movement of charge in the wire. He said we reverse this -- the movement of charge in a wire is due to to the energy current surrounding the wire. The wire acts like a guide. So, Reversitons. 55 results.
Electons have a negative charge, so, Negitons. 945 results.

[HuronKing]

All of Einstein's Relativity is rubbish. His spacetime is rubbish (actually i don’t think that he believed in spacetime either).

https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/science/fundamentals/article/2016/01/08/why-einsteins-general-relativity-such-popular-target-cranks

[SandyCox]

Either Pain is wrong or u is wrong.

Is English your native language?

[SandyCox]

https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/20442-what-makes-a-crackpot/

[penfold]

[...]
I don’t think that i have ever seen a calculation for the faux-speed of (old) electricity, but it would come out to about c/100,000,000.
The delay for a marble popping out would be at least as long as the delay of a sound wave in a glass marble.
[...]

How do you define the faux-speed? The change in charge distribution and current due to an electric field resulting from an injection of current or change in E-field or B-field is predicted rather well by Maxwell. Maxwell doesn't determine the electron velocities directly, only a J 'field', but it would be a pretty trivial step to determine how much charge is displaced and at what rate to satisfy the external E and B fields.

A thick enamel coating would affect the relationship between the external fields and internal charge density that would ultimately affect the speed of propagation. That is something that is probably most well studied in antenna theory, or at least if there were any surprising results, they'd have probably shown up in that field already... worth investigating maybe.

[eugene]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12688660_Unskilled_and_Unaware_of_It_How_Difficulties_in_Recognizing_One's_Own_Incompetence_Lead_to_Inflated_Self-Assessments

[SandyCox]

A thick enamel coating would affect the relationship between the external fields and internal charge density that would ultimately affect the speed of propagation. That is something that is probably most well studied in antenna theory, or at least if there were any surprising results, they'd have probably shown up in that field already... worth investigating maybe.

The topic is not new. Here is an example of a paper:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1131547

[penfold]

A thick enamel coating would affect the relationship between the external fields and internal charge density that would ultimately affect the speed of propagation. That is something that is probably most well studied in antenna theory, or at least if there were any surprising results, they'd have probably shown up in that field already... worth investigating maybe.

The topic is not new. Here is an example of a paper:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1131547

And... hey presto... it is and it has been well studied in antennas... won't be purchasing the article, but I guess it's a safe assumption that from an input impedance and fields perspective it shows a good agreement with Maxwell?

[HuronKing]

A thick enamel coating would affect the relationship between the external fields and internal charge density that would ultimately affect the speed of propagation. That is something that is probably most well studied in antenna theory, or at least if there were any surprising results, they'd have probably shown up in that field already... worth investigating maybe.

The topic is not new. Here is an example of a paper:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1131547

And... hey presto... it is and it has been well studied in antennas... won't be purchasing the article, but I guess it's a safe assumption that from an input impedance and fields perspective it shows a good agreement with Maxwell?

Absolutely - I can access these articles (hurrary for university login!) and I posted about this in this thread in reply #1019. The dielectric medium is very important and this is something predicted by Maxwell-Heaviside theory.

[aetherist]

Either Pain is wrong or u is wrong.

Is English your native language?

If enuff of us say is & if is becomes the most common usage then is will become the correct grammar.
I have started the ball rolling but it are up to u to help.

[TimFox]

Always remember that bad spelling and incorrect grammar is the usual method to detect spam.

[adx]

aetherist, I had penned a reply which includes the above subject (insulation, slowing propagation) lastnight, something I meant to do a few pages back but ran out of time. It is only fair to explain, because it such a well-known result of conventional theory that it often taken for granted, which could leave you believing it is something new when it not.

But empirically so far you seem incapable of following through on a back and forth argument without branching off rapidly and repeatedly to familiar but different places like a fractal. I can understand that! Many on here can probably also relate to some degree, but there will be a limit to how much apparent contradiction or sales-job like attempts to dress up an ill-formed (incomplete) idea that they will swallow. FYI I am past that point, because you are either arguing with or persistently ignoring facts in a very unintelligent way.

But plug the dielectric constant into any online calculator which shows the per-length L and C of a transmission line. You will see that the C increases, but L does not. I don't need to explain (or understand) how that is. But simulate a pulse travelling through a lumped element transmission line, using your choice of cell size. The propagation speed of that pulse slows, a result of the per length increase in C, itself a result of the dielectric. This closely matches measurement.

Maybe there are some differences in the details that are as yet undiscovered, but that doesn't mean the scope traces and descriptions which show slowing of EM energy are grossly wrong.

Edit: Not changing anything, but not sure what took off those "'s"s, wasn't me AFAIK.

[aetherist]

[...]I don’t think that i have ever seen a calculation for the faux-speed of (old) electricity, but it would come out to about c/100,000,000.
The delay for a marble popping out would be at least as long as the delay of a sound wave in a glass marble.[...]

How do you define the faux-speed? The change in charge distribution and current due to an electric field resulting from an injection of current or change in E-field or B-field is predicted rather well by Maxwell. Maxwell doesn't determine the electron velocities directly, only a J 'field', but it would be a pretty trivial step to determine how much charge is displaced and at what rate to satisfy the external E and B fields.

A thick enamel coating would affect the relationship between the external fields and internal charge density that would ultimately affect the speed of propagation. That is something that is probably most well studied in antenna theory, or at least if there were any surprising results, they'd have probably shown up in that field already... worth investigating maybe.

Goodish equations that give goodish numbers is ok, but i have not seen any good (convincing) description of how enamel might affect the speed of electricity in/on/around a wire.

Re antennas -- my guess is that a transmitting dipole antenna painted with enamel would have to be 50% longer (to give the same frequency).
Re antennas -- no amount of so-called study can tell us the possible cause unless it looks deeply into the (microscopic) physics rather than the (macroscopic) maths.


I think that Maxwell  did not need any encouragement to invent a mechanical model to help his thinking etc for whatever electrical problem that he was struggling with. So, if his writings didn’t include any such model for the effect of the insulation on a wire then it is safe to say that he was not even aware of the problem.

Heaviside too loved mechanical models for electricity, but here i think that his equations worked very well first pop, & hence he didn’t need a model for insulation. Or, he did have a model, but it was very simple, because it was basically a simple coaxial cable simply completely filled with simple insulation. Heaviside didn’t realise that he was also talking about (or should have been talking about) a simple wire with a simple thin coating of say shellac. Had he realised that a part of his energy current was in the shellac & that most of his energy current was outside the shellac, but that the thin layer of shellac won, then he would have been forced to make a complicated model, & his model might have lead to the discovery of the electon, & i would not be here writing my stuff today.