Veritasium "How Electricity Actually Works"

[bsfeechannel]

When you believe that light transferring energy and momentum is the biggest lie told by mainstream science, you'll obviously need a wire to transfer your energy. And when the wire ends, how does the energy go from one wire to the next? Magic, pure magic!

[electrodacus]

When you believe that light transferring energy and momentum is the biggest lie told by mainstream science, you'll obviously need a wire to transfer your energy. And when the wire ends, how does the energy go from one wire to the next? Magic, pure magic!

Electrical energy will only pass through a gap in circuit if there is enough potential energy (high enough voltage) so that electrons can jump that gap.
At 1m air gap you will need almost 3 and a half million volt.
You confuse energy storage in a capacitor with energy going through a capacitor.

When you connect two wires to the battery so not close circuit just two parallel wires unconnected to echoder each wire on one terminal of the battery the wires will experience an charge imbalance with one wire getting extra electrons from battery and the other donating the same amount on the other terminal.
If you disconnect this wires from battery they will keep their charge imbalance and the battery will now have less stored energy than it had before.
Keeping the wires after the charge was transferred (a few nanoseconds) will not make any change.
Connecting the wires again will also not make any change unless you short the wires for a moment so that excess electrons from one wire are donated to the wire that has the deficit basically discharging the stored energy.

Is there any part from the above that you think is untrue ?   

[HuronKing]

If you write words that agree with the textbooks, then you are wasting your time because we can all read the textbooks.

If you write words that disagree with the textbooks, then you are wasting your time because you won't convince anyone else and apparently you don't wish to learn.

Either way, you are wasting your time posting.

Show me the textbooks that say "energy doesn't travel inside the wire" as that is exact quote Derek made.

Here ya go.

It is evident that the power flow is through the empty space surrounding the circuit, the conductors of the circuit acting as guiding elements. From the circuit point of view we usually think of the power as flowing through the wires but this is an oversimplification and does not represent the actual situation.

J.D. Kraus, Electromagnetics Chapter 10, P.418

http://xn--webducation-dbb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/McGraw-Hill-electrical-and-electronic-engineering-series-John-D.-Kraus-Keith-R.-Carver-Electromagnetics-McGraw-Hill-1981.pdf

Let me guess? You're gonna start railing about how Kraus, THE Kraus, 'doesn't understand capacitors and energy storage'? 

You really ought to familiarize yourself with the textbooks Derek is using as his source material. Kraus' diagram of the Poynting energy flow on P.417 is very standard in advanced electromagnetics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Kraus

[HuronKing]

Electrical energy will only pass through a gap in circuit if there is enough potential energy (high enough voltage) so that electrons can jump that gap.

Is there any part from the above that you think is untrue ?

Do you honestly think that a microwave oven cooks your food by making electrons jump the gap from the magnetron to a potato? How does the electrical energy get there across the air gap?

http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/104_spring2004.web.dir/arts_mcnulty/howmicrowaveovenswork.htm

There is plenty of electrical energy crossing gaps but not an electron in sight - except inside the potato. There is a thing called... di... duh...diissssplacement currrrreeennntttt. Electromagnetic radiation? Photons? Ever heard of them? 

Now, of course you might try to say that microwave radiation doesn't belong in circuit theory... but why not? Maxwell's Equations are perfect descriptors of both phenomena. The consequence is freedom from the confines of wires. It's okay though - Tesla was going wireless before the world had wires. 

[Naej]

When you believe that light transferring energy and momentum is the biggest lie told by mainstream science, you'll obviously need a wire to transfer your energy. And when the wire ends, how does the energy go from one wire to the next? Magic, pure magic!

When you believe that wires transferring energy and momentum is the biggest lie told by mainstream science, you'll obviously need vacuum to transfer your energy. And when the vacuum ends, how does the energy go from one vacuum to the next? Magic, pure magic!


Yes science looks like magic to people without knowledge. It's ok. You can learn if you want to, but you have to stop mocking it first.

It is evident that the power flow is through the empty space surrounding the circuit, the conductors of the circuit acting as guiding elements. From the circuit point of view we usually think of the power as flowing through the wires but this is an oversimplification and does not represent the actual situation.

J.D. Kraus, Electromagnetics Chapter 10, P.418

a) He didn't justify, in any way, how exactly it is an oversimplification. Sure, it's simpler.
b) He didn't justify, in any way, how it does not represent the actual situation.

[bsfeechannel]

Yes science looks like magic to people without knowledge. It's ok. You can learn if you want to, but you have to stop mocking it first.

You are the antimatter version of the Aetherist. He thinks that without an ether locality is violated. You, on the other hand, think that space is empty and needs some kind of material support for locality to exist.

If you some day meet him, you'll annihilate each other and release at least two very energetic and momentous photons.

[electrodacus]

J.D. Kraus, Electromagnetics Chapter 10, P.418

http://xn--webducation-dbb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/McGraw-Hill-electrical-and-electronic-engineering-series-John-D.-Kraus-Keith-R.-Carver-Electromagnetics-McGraw-Hill-1981.pdf

Let me guess? You're gonna start railing about how Kraus, THE Kraus, 'doesn't understand capacitors and energy storage'? 

You really ought to familiarize yourself with the textbooks Derek is using as his source material. Kraus' diagram of the Poynting energy flow on P.417 is very standard in advanced electromagnetics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Kraus

The guys that lived way before electron was discovered (John Henry Poynting 1884) could only guess what happens and it guessed wrong.
Derk has significant lack in understanding energy and energy storage as it clearly showed in the video about faster than wind direct downwind vehicle and now here with the transmission line.
Derek only so called "proof" was to show that some current flows through the load before it had time to travel around the wire.  But that is no proof if you understand that two parallel wires have capacitance and understand that capacitor is a energy storage device.

Electrical current in modern times (after the electron was discovered so after both Poynting and Maxwell where alive) is the flow of a charged particle (electron in this particular case but can also be ions).
As there is no electron flow outside the wires in this example at 20V and 1m of air between wires all energy both at constant DC but also during transient is transported through wires only.

[electrodacus]

For all those that think that energy is traveling outside wires I have a question.

Can you shield against electric and magnetic fields ?
If yes then can I shield the battery or the load so that energy can no longer get to load ?

[SiliconWizard]

It's been two threads and things are still running in circles.

While I do not agree with everything electrodacus has written, I understand his question here: I don't think I've really seen a proper answer (except possibly in the early stages of the first thread), neither on here or in Veritasium's videos, about the role of wires and why we actually needed them (but we do for sure.)

[xrunner]

It's been two threads and things are still running in circles.

While I do not agree with everything electrodacus has written, I understand his question here: I don't think I've really seen a proper answer (except possibly in the early stages of the first thread), neither on here or in Veritasium's videos, about the role of wires and why we actually needed them (but we do for sure.)

Is all this about why we need wires to transmit energy?  I haven't followed along enough to know what the hell is going on, so I probably should keep my mouth shut. 


But no, we don't need wires to get energy from point A to point B. You can do it wirelessly. Say you have an electric lawn mower: you need electric energy to power it. You can get it from a battery on-board (short wires). Or you can use long wires and use an extension cord back to the mains outlet.

Or ...

You (in theory) could use a high powered rf beam of a certain frequency to get the energy to the mower. You'd either have to blanket the yard with rf, (very inefficient) or have a tracking system so both antennas have the maximum gain aligned all the time you are mowing. Then an on-board power supply system to turn the rf into DC. We're forgetting about what the high power rf beam will do to your body at the moment. 

Yea it's possible but go ahead and try to build the wireless lawn mower power system and see how long it is before you go back to good old wires ...

 

[TimFox]

One reason I mentioned waveguides as a way of transferring power:
Another group at my university needed to transfer power to the top of a 1 MV accelerator, to operate the cathode and auxiliary electronics referenced to the cathode.
They used a dielectric waveguide:  like a metal one, but with a high dielectric constant ceramic as the envelope.  It was long enough to hold off the 1 MV DC potential difference between the terminal and ground.
A CW magnetron down at ground potential launched power up the guide to a receiving antenna, where a simple (high speed) rectifier provided DC power for the terminal.

[HuronKing]

It's been two threads and things are still running in circles.

While I do not agree with everything electrodacus has written, I understand his question here: I don't think I've really seen a proper answer (except possibly in the early stages of the first thread), neither on here or in Veritasium's videos, about the role of wires and why we actually needed them (but we do for sure.)

Wires are wave guides.

Fields emanate from charges - charges live in conductors and the field disturbances carry the energy which influences nearby charges or charges in other conductors. I posted a video a few replies ago that illustrates this. And Kraus in Chapter 10 makes this explicit when he describes the Poynting Vector in circuit theory terms in a chapter about wave guides (including showing what happens when an infinite conducting sheet is placed between battery and load and how this changes the shape of the Poynting vector field).

And Feynman includes a lecture on this:
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_24.html

In the last chapter we studied what happened to the lumped elements of circuits when they were operated at very high frequencies, and we were led to see that a resonant circuit could be replaced by a cavity with the fields resonating inside. Another interesting technical problem is the connection of one object to another, so that electromagnetic energy can be transmitted between them. In low-frequency circuits the connection is made with wires, but this method doesn’t work very well at high frequencies because the circuits would radiate energy into all the space around them, and it is hard to control where the energy will go. The fields spread out around the wires; the currents and voltages are not “guided” very well by the wires. In this chapter we want to look into the ways that objects can be interconnected at high frequencies. At least, that’s one way of presenting our subject.

The 'energy always travels in wires' people cannot hope to design, let alone explain, how a high-frequency waveguide works and how to CONTROL where energy is going.

[rfeecs]

It's been two threads and things are still running in circles.

While I do not agree with everything electrodacus has written, I understand his question here: I don't think I've really seen a proper answer (except possibly in the early stages of the first thread), neither on here or in Veritasium's videos, about the role of wires and why we actually needed them (but we do for sure.)

You need the wires to guide the energy from the source to the load.

For the case of the battery powering the light, there is very little potential drop along the good conductor wires, so they set up the potential across the load.

The power dissipated in the load is VI.  For DC, based on conservation of charge, the current has to be the same everywhere in the circuit.  So the wires are also needed to provide a circuit for current to flow.

This is why you need the wires for DC.  It says nothing about where the energy is "flowing".  Based on conservation of energy, it flows out of the volume of space surrounding the battery and into the volume of space surrounding the load.

The energy flow could be inside the wires or through the empty space.

For AC it's a slightly different story.

[electrodacus]

The 'energy always travels in wires' people cannot hope to design, let alone explain, how a high-frequency waveguide works and how to CONTROL where energy is going.

A lot of people still live in the 1800's when electrons did not exist.
We are discussing a DC transmission line yet Derek prefered to just concentrate at the first 65ns of transient that he has no understanding of.
Even if we ignore (because you do not understand) the energy storage that is responsible for the transient part what happens at steady state after that transient as there is no longer any fluctuating electric or magnetic field they are just constant. Yet lamp/resistor is using energy.

Answer the earlier question about shielding against magnetic and electric fields either the battery or the load so that no energy can be transferred ?
I can simply made a cut / gap in the conductor 1mm will be more than sufficient for 20V and I can stop the energy flow between the battery and lamp.
My 1mm gap example should pe proof enough for any sane person that energy travels through wires but somehow with no proof you like to think there energy magically travels outside the wire.

[HuronKing]

A lot of people still live in the 1800's when electrons did not exist.
We are discussing a DC transmission line yet Derek prefered to just concentrate at the first 65ns of transient that he has no understanding of.

You still don't get the point of the experiment? To demonstrate the radiation of energy during a transient getting there faster than it could traveling through the wire alone which means some energy was radiated from the switch to the lamp. Ben Watson's simulation demonstrates this explicitly. I'm pretty sure the people who designed HFSS know about electrons... 

Even if we ignore (because you do not understand) the energy storage that is responsible for the transient part what happens at steady state after that transient as there is no longer any fluctuating electric or magnetic field they are just constant. Yet lamp/resistor is using energy.

The Poynting vector is still established. See Kraus Chapter 10.

Answer the earlier question about shielding against magnetic and electric fields either the battery or the load so that no energy can be transferred ?
I can simply made a cut / gap in the conductor 1mm will be more than sufficient for 20V and I can stop the energy flow between the battery and lamp.
My 1mm gap example should pe proof enough for any sane person that energy travels through wires but somehow with no proof you like to think there energy magically travels outside the wire.

And you'd be utterly mystified if the frequency of the voltage source changed in any way and the lamp could still illuminate.

I have another way. Put an infinite conducting sheet between the source and the load. This is actually a far more effective shielding mechanism. E-fields can still cross your gap. E-fields cannot get through the infinite sheet. ExH is zero. No energy flow. Again, see Kraus Chapter 10.

I would never use an air gap if, hypothetically, I wanted to guarantee no energy ever crosses from one circuit to another. How do you think coaxial cables or rectangular waveguides work?!?! 

The only thing special about DC is that the waveguide has to guide the wave the whole way at steady-state.

[electrodacus]

You need the wires to guide the energy from the source to the load.

For the case of the battery powering the light, there is very little potential drop along the good conductor wires, so they set up the potential across the load.

The power dissipated in the load is VI.  For DC, based on conservation of charge, the current has to be the same everywhere in the circuit.  So the wires are also needed to provide a circuit for current to flow.

This is why you need the wires for DC.  It says nothing about where the energy is "flowing".  Based on conservation of energy, it flows out of the volume of space surrounding the battery and into the volume of space surrounding the load.

The energy flow could be inside the wires or through the empty space.

For AC it's a slightly different story.

There is no difference between AC and DC in the sense that energy travels through wires. Else why will you invest in massive transmission lines for AC.
In a battery ions are involved so is maybe best to use a charged capacitor as the energy source to better understand what happens.
The capacitor plates are basically wires and you have excess of electrons in one plate and deficit of electrons on the other plate.
If you connect a wire between the two capacitor plates you allow the electrons to travel from the plate with excess of electrons to the plate with deficit so that they both become neutral as stored energy is discharged.
That flow of electrons is electrical current and the density of excess electrons is the electrical potential (voltage).  The product of this two is electrical power and the integral of electrical power over time is electrical energy.
Since you can not have electron flow outside wires so no electrical current you can not have energy flow outside wires.

Let me know what part of my explanation you think is wrong.
 

[rfeecs]

What can we actually measure? 

We can measure fields based on what they do to charges.  We can make tiny power sensors with resistors and thermistors for example and measure what happens to them when we position them at a point in space.  If they get hot, we can say there is energy at that point in space.

So we can develop a theory based on the concept that there is an electromagnetic energy density at any given point in space, based on how much energy is required to move charges or currents to this point in space from infinity.  We can calculate what this energy density would be based on the E and B field.  We can measure it with the thermistor power sensor or something similar and convince ourselves that the measurements agree with the theory.

Based on this theory and the definition of electromagnetic energy density, we can measure energy outside of a wire conducting a time varying current.  Similarly, we can measure energy in the empty space of a waveguide.  We can measure the energy of a radio signal in free space.

We can extend this to a theory of the "flow" of electromagnetic energy and verify it by measurement.

For a wire carrying a DC current it's a slightly different story.

[electrodacus]

You still don't get the point of the experiment? To demonstrate the radiation of energy during a transient getting there faster than it could traveling through the wire alone which means some energy was radiated from the switch to the lamp. Ben Watson's simulation demonstrates this explicitly. I'm pretty sure the people who designed HFSS know about electrons... 

You made no mention about energy storage ? Do you understand that two parallel conductors are a capacitor? and that a capacitor is an energy storage device?

Have you see the Spice simulation I made for a transmission line where I turn the switch ON for just 30ns then turn it OFF

The green graph is the power provided by the battery and with magenta power dissipated by the lamp/resistor.
How come total energy provided by battery exactly matches the energy arriving at the lamp (most of it quite some time after the switch was OFF) and the delta in energy is found as heat loss in the wire.

[Naej]

The 'energy always travels in wires' people cannot hope to design, let alone explain, how a high-frequency waveguide works and how to CONTROL where energy is going.

It's in the conductor, and follows the conductor. And if you put holes, you'll start radiating the energy.
Can the 'energy always travels in vacuum' people explain why you need conductors in waveguides?  (in dielectrics, you have polarization current instead of current)
Or, since waveguides are wires, in circuits?

[IanB]

I think one simple (or simplified) way to look at things is that delivered power is the product of voltage and current. The voltage comes from the E field. A strong E field can be propagated by wires and can give a large power delivery, but it has to travel the length of the wires to arrive. A weaker E field can be propagated across the air gap and can give a much smaller power delivery, but it can arrive faster. This qualitatively aligns with Derek's experiment.

[TimFox]

The 'energy always travels in wires' people cannot hope to design, let alone explain, how a high-frequency waveguide works and how to CONTROL where energy is going.

It's in the conductor, and follows the conductor. And if you put holes, you'll start radiating the energy.
Can the 'energy always travels in vacuum' people explain why you need conductors in waveguides?  (in dielectrics, you have polarization current instead of current)
Or, since waveguides are wires, in circuits?

There are dielectric waveguides for microwave frequencies, usually using a high-dielectric-constant ceramic for the walls.
https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/jk1/Electromagnetism/node118.html

[electrodacus]

I think one simple (or simplified) way to look at things is that delivered power is the product of voltage and current. The voltage comes from the E field. A strong E field can be propagated by wires and can give a large power delivery, but it has to travel the length of the wires to arrive. A weaker E field can be propagated across the air gap and can give a much smaller power delivery, but it can arrive faster. This qualitatively aligns with Derek's experiment.

You only have an E field when you have a delta in charge. So you need first the extra electron then you have the E field.
There is a very strong E field between the plates of a charged capacitor so how come that no energy is transferred from one plate to the other basically discharging the capacitor?

What you consider that weeker electric field it is due to delta in charge between the two wires. Those parallel wires form a capacitor that is an energy storage device and energy from battery flows in that capacitor (in and not trough) and since energy travels through wires from battery to that capacitor and the lamp or resistor is also a wire the energy to charge the capacitor will flow through them.

If energy will not have traveled through wire then wire thickness will not have matter. You could transfer a lot of power from battery to lamp/load with a very thin copper wire that just shows the power the direction it needs to travel
It is like saying that energy from a compressed air tank is delivered to a compressed air tool outside the hose.     

[IanB]

Those parallel wires form a capacitor that is an energy storage device and energy from battery flows in that capacitor (in and not trough) and since energy travels through wires from battery to that capacitor and the lamp or resistor is also a wire the energy to charge the capacitor will flow through them.

I see. So if you have three capacitors in series, the energy to charge the middle capacitor flows through the outer capacitors. If energy does not flow through the outer capacitors the middle capacitor will not be charged. If energy does flow through the outer capacitors the middle capacitor will be charged.

[electrodacus]

I see. So if you have three capacitors in series, the energy to charge the middle capacitor flows through the outer capacitors. If energy does not flow through the outer capacitors the middle capacitor will not be charged. If energy does flow through the outer capacitors the middle capacitor will be charged.

At no point in time any energy flows through the capacitor.
3 or more capacitors in series are no different from a single capacitor.

If all 3 capacitors are 1000uF when connected in series will look like only a single 333uF capacitor.

Imagine a parallel plate capacitor with 5mm between plates and say it has 1uF capacitance.
Then insert a very thin 0.001mm plate between the two plates with same area. This will be the equivalent of two capacitors in series so from outside the capacitor will still look like a single 1uF capacitor (just slightly more due to that 0.001mm reduction in distance between plates).
If that plate is instead 2.5mm thick then from outside it will look like a 2uF capacitor but it is actually two 4uF capacitors in series.
Adding multiple plates will not change the fact that from outside any number of series connected capacitors will appear as a single capacitor and it can be charged.
There will be a current flow inside the middle plate as electrons from one side of the plate travel to the other side (it is a short distance even for the 2.5mm thick plate) but there is still a current flow as electrons that where already there travel from one side of the plate to the other while capacitor is being charged.

This charge separation remains there after you remove the battery so it is stored energy not used energy. Now this capacitor or series capacitors can be used to do any sort of work you want with that stored energy.
 

[hamster_nz]

If energy will not have traveled through wire then wire thickness will not have matter. You could transfer a lot of power from battery to lamp/load with a very thin copper wire that just shows the power the direction it needs to travel
It is like saying that energy from a compressed air tank is delivered to a compressed air tool outside the hose.   

Run your "compressed air" analogy, with a hard vacuum in the pipe instead, supplied from a very large cylinder, with a very good vacuum pump.

The pipes are literally delivering nothing, so energy can be extracted from the air around the pipes.

If your pipe is too tiny, you won't get enough 'nothing' to run your tools efficiently, but it won't matter if the pipe is too large.

Pipes are essential to the system working, even though they carry no usable energy.

The energy is outside of the pipes, but the pipes dictate where you can extract the energy - no pipe, you can't do work.