It is amazing how human beings were able to figure out how to use Quantum Fields to generate electricity with wires and send radio and tv signals through what seemed like just air.
Mind=Blown I have no idea who showed me this or how I discovered it, but if you go underneath the huge transmission lines that you will find in the desert areas surrounding Phoenix, and hold a fluorescent tube style bulb in the air at night, it glows. Actually a lot brighter than you would expect. I always kinda figured this was due to the huge amounts of power running through the lines somehow radiating through the insulation (You actually can hear the lines buzzing and crackling, pretty sketchy actually) but this explanation makes way more sense now. Subscribed!!!
@Paul Rodden from billion dollars companies that damage the economy(relative to state run or small business). I'll steal, rob, and exploit any way they fail to prevent.
As a ham radio operator, I was taught that RF (radio frequency) travels along the outer skin of the wire. The higher the frequency, the more pronounced the effect. Rf in non-visible (low frequency) light so that works for me. So the surface aria of the wire making up the antenna feedline, or wire antenna makes a difference. Not only the surface aria of the wire, but surface coating of the wire. Electroplate a copper wire with gold, and conductivity and efficiency dramatically improve. In practical applications, however, there is a point of deminishing returns with increasing or coating surface arias in efficiency, weight, strength and cost. FUN STUFF!!!
I had a break in my underground dog fence. I wrapped one side of the wire around the spark plug in my weed eater to send a signal and used a hand held AM radio to find the break. It worked like a charm!
If you paid attention in the 1970s? AT&T hot switch their wiring and the extension cords and such to Flat-ribbon "wires", which had a similar surface area to a round wire, but we're lighter, cheaper, and there was no loss in the overall quality.
You are absolutely correct. There the electro magnetic field is “guided” through the wave guide to reduce energy losses. But still the energy flows through the field and the direction of the energy flow is given by the cross product of E and B.
Hi @Veritasium, I enjoyed the video with the concept of energy flux and the use of electron as "static" media guiding the electromagnetic waves. But how do you explain arcing with the energy flux as arcing is a flux of electron ionizing the ambient air? Or how do you explain electronic components such as transistors triggered by electron flux?
There's something I still can't explain. Energy is carried through the electromagnetic field wich is quite logical afterwards but here's my problem : how do you explain that an other device placed in that field doesn't use that energy too. Said differently, if I place a light bulb (not connected to anything) just next to an other one while it's working, why wouldn'it turn on too ? The question may seem stupid but I can't give it a clear answer by myself, if someone could enlighten me :)
The Poynting vector will flow across the light bulb without being absorbed. Technically we say the divergence of the Poynting vector will be zero. On the other hand if an electrical current runs along the wire it produced a magnetic field whose magnitude decreases as one approaches the axis of the wire (see Ampere law). Because of this, inward flux of the Poynting vector decreases (electromagnteic energy being converted to heat)
@Sergey Romanov This is not true. Energy ONLY travels "through the air" (or any other dielectric medium). The only thing you're right about is that the experiment probably won't work (or not well at least). This is because the voltage rail (high side of the conductor) must be coupled to ground (or whatever your "common" or "reference" is). The further these two are apart, the higher the impedance of the signal path becomes. High impedance means weak electrical field, weak magnetic field, and the inability to transfer energy. It's like indirectly adding two huge resistors in your signal path (on top of the resistance of the conductors themselves. You're proven wrong in many examples: near-field charging, static electricity, lightning, etc.
It's easy to explain: no device will, in practice, use the energy traveling through the air. The only exception is when you have really huge transmission lines with a huge voltage, then you can see fluorescent lamps glow as if by themselves. This video is simply dumb, because the experiment would not work (unless he has a truly huge battery).
Awesome video!! Poynting vectors where referenced often by Tom Bearden. John Bedini devices collected this energy from around the wires using sharp gradient impulses of energy, while shutting off the potential source before current could flow and kill the source di-pole. He was able to induce energy into the wire and collect the Poynting vector energy without depleting the source supply. This is an great video that might help pave the way to understand electricity better. And appreciate that there is more going on around the wires than through the wires. And this energy can be engineered to our benefit.
Well, I'm having trouble "visualizing" I guess. I was doing fine right up until I thought about diodes/FET's , well, any semiconductor that ignores magnetic anything. "Diodes" I guess, still constitute a conductor when fwd biased, but I was also taught electrons move quite a bit "microscopically speaking" in semi-conductors. (esp. a reversed biased junction) I see what's been offered in the video, and it definitely is a proof, but no or "extremely little" electron movement?
@Derek Schulte No. Thank you for your reply, I have been retired for a while now, but back in the 70,s, you could only work with componants that were singular in nature, and the pcb,s were huge in comparison to what,s used today.
I'm guessing you don't design electronics/printed circuit boards? This is a must-know concept for circuit board design. At least in today's world with how fast and small everything has gotten in regards to IC's and overall circuit board sizes.
@Alan Wannemaker this is a terrible reply. He doesn't understand electricity and you don't understand teaching skills. If you want to learn how to be teach properly, try opening your mind sometime.
@Dogald Trump Seeing that the right hand rule works for the wires leaving *both* ends of the battery really turned on a light bulb for me. Pun intended.
Yeah the whole Curl Vector of the E field and the B field and the 'right hand rule' is the domain of a few poor souls learning EM at college. So maybe 0.1% of people are 'getting it'.
If you don’t think that electricity travels through wires then just cut the wire and see what happens. Or use a shielded coax cable and try to make the same assertion.
@bakunin888 Veritasium is the one who has them confused. Eg he apparently doesn’t know that 60 Hz signals do not propagate in free space unlike RF signals.
So I still don’t understand. If I can ask does that mean that if you put a theoretically perfect insulator between the battery and the light bulb and the two are only connected by the conductor then the bulb won’t light up because the magnetic fields won’t be able to flow through the air to the bulb??
Okay, I'll trust you, you are far more educated than I on the subject, but I want more answers? Like how does a diode actually work, if the energy is flowing both ways? Is the energy flow dependant on electron flow, even though most of the "information" is in the energy? I have so many questions.
The energy is flowing from a higher potential state to a lower potential state i e from the battery to the light bulb. It never goes from low to high potential unless you add in additional energy to the system. The energy field i.e the flow is represented as the yellow vectors in the video.
More BS. What is energy? What is energy fluxes? What is electric field? What is magnetic field? What is the carrier of the field? Where is the field? What is the content of the field? How field oscillates? Why electron does not accelerating to positively charged protons? What force or mechanism to make electron stay away from the nuclear? What carries electric field and magnetic field in empty space? If photons move at light speed from the sun hitting earth is fact, what speed and direction the solar system moves? Is there any drags from sea of photons in the space?
@Sergey Romanov but he clearly made the assumption that the light bulb turns on as soon as it get ANY small amount of Energy from the battery so you didnt listen correctly
@Max Brewster danger of ignorance. The video is dumb, because a normal battery will not be enough to turn on the lamp through a 1m air gap, so the answer he gives is incorrect. It will take 1 s, not 1/c s.
Can we transfer information using this faster than with speed of light? If there were a switch far from our light bulb and battery, but we can see if lamp works almost instantly, then we would get the information about consistency of our chain almost instantly and about state of the switch that is few light seconds from us…
Because the light you see from the bulb, and the information you transmit order to the bulb can't go faster than the speed of light, how is this supposed to be faster than light?
Well what type of information would you transfer from a light bulb, Because only light can be seen from far away, not other form which you refer to as information.
Wait.. so how would this apply to a thunderstorm. How would you link this concept to that of the earth enormous electromagnetic field and lightning? Would shifting plates or churning molten metals and minerals be a generating source?
My grandad was a practical joker when one day at the auctions he bought a wooden box of his knowledge of knowing what it was called me and my siblings because my grandma looked after us during school holidays when my parents were working. He gave me a bar to hold attached to a wire and told me to hold hands with my brothers hands linking us together to give grandma a bar to hold he turned the handle on the box to nothing happened to then asked grandma to hold my hand to make a circle of my siblings holding hands and started to wind the handle to myself and grandma got a shocking experience. He laughed and my grandma really buggered himself laughing at us because we were gullible. Until we created a circle and circuit to no effect from the winding mechanism of it was a party piece of fun for him. I remember when he gave my aunt a rod to hold and wound up the box and she kept saying what does it do, so he stopped winding and gave her the other rod in her other hand and started playing with the box and she shrilled her head off. I was about 7 years old. He collected bygone days tools and gadgets from the past and built a small museum of odd looking objects and tools of various ages in used to stage stalls at fund raising events and parties for people to guess what the objects were and several different items were used to pay for a go to if you guessed correctly you won a prize. The backyard was a place for old farm tools for ploughing and arable tools to old fashioned stage coaches lamps and miners lamps to become a great source of inspiration to crafting skills and older tools and machines.
What happens when you apply this theory to CERN? The way that I see it, everything is made of energy and has its own gravity. To conclude a proper experiment on this theory, you would have to be in a complete void to properly conclude this experiment. And take into account all the materials used to perform the experiment within itself. Thus, depending on the exact thickness and density of your wires would have an impact on your outcome. But where exactly is there a complete void to go through with such an experiment. Even if you were at the exact center between the Milky Way and Snickers Galaxy, there would still be interference at play. The way that I see it, there seems to be some kind of paradox within the whole operation. In other words, you would have to perform the experiment with nothing around it. Nothing at all. For Infinity amount of space. And you could have to conduct the experiment without there being any equipment. Because the equipment itself becomes its own variable. I hope I said that right 🤷
I have a competing explanation for the 1/c answer. C is the speed of causality in this mental simulation we call life. Since the bulb is 1 meter away from the power source, it takes 1/c seconds to update that part of the model with the information that it should be turned on.
Of course I find this video now… around 6 months ago I got into a small debate with my electrical engineering professor over a topic very similar to this. Everyone in the class seemed to be on the professors side which I guess makes sense but then the following week our professor walks into class and tells me he thought about what I was asking and had looked into it. He walked up to the board and showed some of the similar stuff you did in this video and proclaimed I had actually been correct and my original question that countered his previous discussion he admitted to the class he was in fact wrong. This was the first time in my life I had such a crystallized idea of what someone that was truly intelligent acted like. He wasn’t upset, frustrated or hurt that his initial statement was wrong because he didn’t care about being right, he cared about the truth. I know it sounds corny to say seeing someone look for confirmation instead of affirmation changed my outlook on life but it really did. Never before had I seen some so openly question their very own view and search for the truth rather than search for what backs up their view or idea. Great video, as always
I was told some years ago that the faint twinkle you notice when viewing city lights (at night!) is created by the 50/60 cycles per second change of direction of alternating current. I have noticed that this phenomenon is particularly noticeable when looking at a large expanse of city lights from an elevated position, and is even more obvious when the air is crystal clear after rain has fallen.
@JustAnother InternetExpert True. Elon Musk is wrong often. Space X was going to make the first steps toward colonizing Mars in 2017. Space x was going to have a dozen launches in 2017. Tesla charging stations were going to be solar. None of this happened. No admission of being wrong. Musk is a smart guy, but his ego is a problem.
@My Daizee I understand that you can't quiet comprehend grammar, but make an effort. That entire rant made no sense whatsoever. You didn't make a single point. Not one. Why? You need punctuation.
@Kiki Jewell Yes because the fact men know more than you means they are dominating you. Does it hurt to be that dumb and that sensitive at the same time? Sorry about the microaggresion. You probably need to find a safe space where Dumb Lives Matter.
If your theory is correct, then you will know the if there's any break point at the far-end of the circuit within 1/c seconds after turn on your switch, this implies superluminal information transfer.
@vmobi that's because he cannot explain sh. He means that the energy will flow over the 1 m gap in the air, so almost immediately. But while some energy will flow, it won't be, with a normal battery, enough to light up the bulb. He's a bad educator.
You won't because electrons have to populate the circuit before power can flow. They do that at the speed of light, but along the path of the circuit. If the circuit is 1 light year in circumference you will have to wait 1 year to see if the light comes on.
This is false. You’re using correlation as causation. Indeed there is energy all around the wire. But only because there is energy traveling through the wire. You are sending people down rabbit holes.
Hang on, so how does energy flow in a direct current circuit? There are no changing magnetic and electric fields. Only constant electric and magnetic fields.
I still have a few questions. So how long would it take to light a bulb that's 300000 km away with a 300000km long wire. Is the answer the speed of light here ?
In both cases it's 1 second. Veri's answer is wrong, since with a normal battery not enough energy will be transmitted over the 1 m gap to light up the bulb.
If the electrons drift at such a low speed, why do electrical effects seem to occur immediately after a switch is thrown, such as when you turn on the room lights? Confusion on this point results from not distinguishing between the drift speed of the electrons and the speed at which changes in the electric feld configuration travel along wires. This latter speed approaches that of light. Similarly, when you turn the valve on your garden hose, with the hose full of water, a pressure wave travels along the hose at the speed of sound in water. The speed at which the water moves through the hose- measured perhaps with a dye marker-is much lower.
How far I listen to this I'm going to State what I learned was the possibility a long time ago, and that is that the energy transfer is a Surface phenomenon and it doesn't run through the core of the wire but on the surface of the wire
My new (electon) electricity says that electricity aint due to drifting electrons, or the Poynting Field/Vector, it is due to photons (electons) hugging the surface of the Cu. The electons propagate in the insulation (if any) in which case they propagate at the speed of light in the plastic, about 2c/3. On bare wires the speed of electricity is 3c/3. A good conductor is a substance that a photon can hug, eg all metals are goodish conductors i think. The hugging is strong if there are free-ish conduction electrons in the wire -- Cu has 2 such electrons per atom. Electons don’t reflect, they do a U-turn at the end of the wire. Actually, electons always go straight ahead, it is the surface of the Cu that duz the U-turn. If u measure the speed of electricity along a threaded rod u will find that the time taken is longer than for a plain rod, the difference being exactly the extra distance up & down over the threads.
I'm an electrician from the UK. This theory can be proven by holding a florescent tube near a power line. It will glow. My family didn't believe me so I showed them. So glad you explained this in a way they understands fully. Thankyou. Very clever.
@Adept of all Of course electric shocks are caused by energy. EMF is just a term for Voltage. High voltage with little current can be painful (eg an electric fence). High voltage with current can be lethal. Power is what does the damage: VI cos phi.
@Sergey Romanov ....ok good idea ...the Hutterites try everyday .. telling me ,,,pay your Hydro bill ..get your driver's license back ..do this do that lo .... Right Right ✅✅✅ to Travel No license No Insurance etc Freedom of Movement must be allowed but then u must Love others as YOURSELF and then the world will begin to be healed fr all the lies, Deception etc ...even ADOPTION IS wrong and Foster Homes and
It's a very good explanatory video. I have just one question: are the electric and magnetic fields actually in phase as the wave figures show? I thought that they were 90 degrees out of phase, with the magnetic field proportional to the *rate of change* of the electric field and vice versa. So if the electric field is a sine wave, the magnetic field is a cosine wave.
Another stone to the basket of the wrong model: Imagine a circuit that is connected by a conductive wire the size of the universe and two lamps. One lamp is connected to the battery positive terminal by a wire of 1 cm long, second lamp is connected to the first lamp by a wire of the size of the universe but physically the distance between the first and the second lamp is only 1 cm. Now we compete the circuit and see that both lamps light up at almost the same moment. Despite the fact that there is an infinite loop connecting the first and the second lamps. Which further means that no matter how the lamps are connected in one circuit the energy flow in each lamp only depends on the distance from the power source. If we imagine a string of bulbs connected in the circuit the size of the Universe and each bulb has a random location in space then if this system is powered up it would look like a glow starting from the place where the battery is located without any regard to the order in which lamps are physically connected between each other in the circuit. Which apparently will violate Einstein energy conservation equation. Wouldn't it? Complete nonsense. You can toss it into the basket. I'm sure the real experiment would proof the statement in this video wrong. That must be a commercial, the guy is selling power switches so what does he know about physics?
@Fairbanks O'Neills It should be spectacular to watch. Glowing originating from the power source regardless of the random bulb connections in the circuit or a random chain of lights going randomly by the circuit. My vote is for the chain. No way we see a glow. If we see a glow then what happens if we open circuit somewhere in the infinity - the glowing of the nearest to the power source bulb which in our case of random bulb locations could be just 1 inch away from the power source should discontinue almost at the same moment regardless of the distance - infinity in our case - of the opened circuit which means that something traveled an infinite distance at an infinite speed to influence energy flux and that would break Einstein equations unless these two points - an infinite opened circuit point and the power source are physically at the same point. A difficult thing to imagine - a wrap of time and space. If Einstein theory holds - there should be no glowing or we have a space wrap. For as long as we have an electromagnetic wave traveling though space Poyinting flux vector works, once we enter a conductor - no. It seems like there should be more to the Poyting vector and what we have now is just a special case. I would love to know if experiment showed it glowing or chaining.
Your observational thought phrased as follows is a elegant, powerfully insightful Einstein-caliber experiment that might be performed: "If we imagine a string of bulbs connected in the circuit the size of the Universe and each bulb has a random location in space then if this system is powered up it would look like a glow starting from the place where the battery is located without any regard to the order in which lamps are physically connected between each other in the circuit."
@Максим! Я This video explains us that the lamps in a completed circuit would light up in order of the physical distance between a lamp and the power source regardless of the order in which the lamps are physically connected into the circuit by conductive wires. Such a circuit in which wiring is irrelevant means that we can cancel conductor from the equation altogether leaving the equation without it. And if we cancel the conductive wire from the equation our circuit would turn into an arrangement of antennas with lamps connected to the antennas and a power source being a transmitter - in this case - in case of waves - it will work as described. Which further hints that the problem is in that transition which the author of the video assumed between the energy flux of a wave and the circuit. The video asserts that the physics is the same and the rest is built on this assertion. Apparently this assertion is not true and the physics is different. When a wave is received by a conductor - a signal received by an antenna - the flux starts propagating along the wire and the order of wiring should (starts mattering) matter, when an energy flux exits the circuit - went again into the space as a wave then no wire connection matters and video holds.The original concept was about the wave, and then it was asserted that the same happens within the circuit and that assertion looks false, once the flux is in the wire - it follows along it as current - once it exits it as a wave - the wiring becomes irrelevant. We can visualize it another way by imagining a beam of light hitting an optical cable, once the beam is in the cable it propagates though the cable and by the cable and wherever the cable leads it it goes when it exits from another side of the optic cable then the cable becomes irrelevant. If in this optic cable we have equivalent of lamps - then they will light up along the cable once the light beam hits them.
@9:20 If you added a "one way diode" why would a one way diode installed backwards cut flow if there are electro magnetic waves are flowing on the outside of the conductor? Or.....? Would it cut flow? I think it would cut flow because that's why one way diodes exist.
Very much like a lesson in object permanence, I would concur. Fascinating! I will have to dig into this more when I get a chance. I'm up at 3 am watching this because I couldn't go back to sleep but I feel oddly exhausted now.
Can I run my 120 volt system with my 12 volt system? Know what I mean? Inside my conduit, can I run the 12 volt wires along with my 120 volt wiring? Any weird field dynamics I nee to worry about.
I've done my electromagnetic exam last year, and we talked about this thoroughly, but this explanation is so clean and clear I enjoyed this like I didn't know it
EE here; I think most of this info is technically correct, but potentially misleading in some areas. For one, while it's true that energy is transferred in the space around a conductor, as opposed to through the conductor, the *vast* majority of that transfer is taking place *extremely* close to the conductor (we're talking millimeters, typically), due to both the magnetic and electric field strengths decreasing exponentially with distance from the conductor. So in reality, the energy being transferred actually decreases superexponentially with distance from the conductor. Now, in power lines, the ground is still a concern because it's a very long conductor, carrying very high voltage, at very high currents; it's a somewhat extreme case. Yet, even though the cable is *miles* long, we only need to separate it from the ground by tens of meters to significantly reduce losses over that long distance. Furthermore, the ground is only a problem because power lines are AC. If they were DC, you could lay the cable right on the ground, and you wouldn't get any significant energy loss. Edit: see below, the dropoff is not actually superexponential, but the general idea that energy transfer is greater closer to the conductor is still accurate. For two, the analogy of electron flow being like water through a tube is actually still accurate in the case of the undersea transmission line. The metal rings around the cable cause a change in electrical impedance for that section of the cable. In the case of water in a tube, this would be analogous to having an air bubble trapped in your tube. As a pressure wave travels through the water, it will suddenly hit this air pocket, which is far more compressible than the water (i.e. has a different impedance), which will cause the waveform to distort in precisely the same manner as the electric wave does in the cable. Some energy will pass through the bubble, creating your distorted (attenuated) waveform, and the rest of the energy will actually become a wave reflected back in the other direction. This is precisely what's causing the distortions in the undersea transmission line. There's a bunch of reflected waves bounding back and forth between all the iron rings that stretch and distort the original signal. (for the real electrical nerds, check out "time domain reflectometry", which uses this principle to precisely detect where a fault exists on a power line) Third; yes, energy transfer from the switch to the bulb will occur in 1/c time (by the way, I think you could clarify this by representing it as d/c time, where d is distance from the switch to the bulb. You never really state where the 1 comes from in that equation (at first I thought you were implying it was a constant value, unrelated to this distance)). And yes, you do clarify that it will only be a fraction of the steady state energy. But I think you should stress that this would be an *extremely* small portion of that steady state energy. The initial energy that the bulb receives will only be due to the capacitive and magnetic coupling between the two long portions of the conductor. And in the case of wire separated by 1 meter, both the capacitive and magnetic coupling would be practically zero. This again is due in part to the exponentially decaying electrical and magnetic field strengths with distance from the conductor, as well as the poor electric and magnetic permiativity of the dielectric (air) between the conductors. Fourth; addressing your question about "why is energy transferred during one half cycle, but not returned back to the plant in the other half of the cycle", I think your physical demonstration actually explains that perfectly. No matter which end of the chain you pull, there's something down the line offering resistance to the motion of the chain. Heck, you even get friction between the chain and the tube, which is like resistance in electrical conductors. However, if you attached a sort of clock spring to your wheel (such that the spring always worked to return the wheel to its at-rest position), you would indeed see some energy returned to the power plant (you) on the second half of the cycle. This is analogous to powering a capacitive load with AC.
@Veritasium In a book written by Professor Phil Callahan - Paramagnetism the Secret Force of Nature, he mentions Tesla having learned of wireless power transmission from a dentist named Loomis. In my opinion, the wireless transmission they both used negates the electron theory.
""Third; yes, energy transfer from the switch to the bulb will occur in 1/c time ---- ---- And yes, you do clarify that it will only be a fraction of the steady state energy."" And this energy runs faster than light! With the clumsy excuse that it is the only small part of that energy that is in a steady state.
@Ujjwal If the electric field is there then it is possible of powering devices. In your scenario what happens when the switch is turned off? Would it take two seconds for the light to turn off? Because that seems to cause some problems. That would imply the battery is powering a light bulb for 2 seconds after the circuit it is connected to is disconnected. Now imagine the battery isn't disconnected by a switch but instead runs out of power. Does it still light the bulb for two seconds after the battery dies due to the field still existing for 2 seconds until the current has time to de-propogate?. The answer is of course that it takes the same time to turn the bulb off as it did to turn it on and it would also behave the same if the battery died, and yet if the battery dies the field directly between the battery and the bulb would have to collapse much quicker since the power is just gone.
Yeah, of course. This is no great revelation to me. I got my education in electromagnetics, including Maxwell, et al, in the 1960s. Also got a solid grounding in atomic physics. Would it come as any surprise that the wavelengths transmitted through glass fiber aren’t actually visible ‘light’ but instead are in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum? Or that a fiber AMPLIFIER has been around since the mid-90s - a literal “straight ‘wire’ with gain”? How was that done? By “pumping” the fiber with lasers, raising electrons into higher energy shells or orbits such that the incoming optical signal results in the release of additional photons - more photons out than entered, thus measurable gain… There’s also a fascinating video clip from the 1980s that helped to understand a process known as DC electromigration. It was recorded through a scanning electron microscope. It served to explain how the interconnections sputtered onto the surfaces of microchips sometimes failed open…
My new (electon) electricity says that electricity aint due to drifting electrons, or the Poynting Field/Vector, it is due to photons (electons) hugging the surface of the Cu. The electons propagate in the insulation (if any) in which case they propagate at the speed of light in the plastic, about 2c/3. On bare wires the speed of electricity is 3c/3. A good conductor is a substance that a photon can hug, eg all metals are goodish conductors i think. The hugging is strong if there are free-ish conduction electrons in the wire -- Cu has 2 such electrons per atom. Electons don’t reflect, they do a U-turn at the end of the wire. Actually, electons always go straight ahead, it is the surface of the Cu that duz the U-turn. If u measure the speed of electricity along a threaded rod u will find that the time taken is longer than for a plain rod, the difference being exactly the extra distance up & down over the threads.
@Mike Steffes you’re not gonna win a battle of wits with me fool. I’m way WAY sharper than you and will just wipe the floor with you, so just cut your losses and stop replying
@Mike Steffes man you just don’t get it 🤦♂️ you are just one of those arrogant old farts that already knew it and had make sure we all know it! Lol, guys that have to kick knowledge like that have no self confidence, no self awareness, no real genitalia to speak of… nobody cares that you already knew what he was talking about ya bird. Such a douche
@Mr Wednesday’s Sober RC lmao, the translation of your gibberish: “I didn’t need no edjucayshun” Why is it my fault you’re too effing ignorant to comprehend my post?
@Mike Steffes lol, I read the first 2 sentences and saw such pompousness I had to intervene. “This is no great revelation to me” 🤣 🤣 what and absolute nerd turd!
Nice point! Energy flow is always in the direction of the cross product of E and B like explained in this video. However, wires are needed to guide the EM field from the source to a destination where it is consumed. Without wires, it is called “radiation” ( energy from the sun). It is undirected and will result in a huge loss of energy. This is actually the challenge! If you can make a wave guide that is efficient enough to guide the EM waves to a destination where it can be consumed, efficient wireless power transmission is achieved. Unfortunately the great mind of Tesla couldn’t figure this one out at his time.
If the energy is contained in the fields outside the wire, then why is wire size important in delivering energy to a load? Seems like it’s both field and electron flow.
A phenomenal explanation of the interplay between electrons, current and flow of electromagnetic energy. I would have loved to have seen this 60 years ago when I was taking physics classes. But now I realize that all of modern neuroscience is based on a Lord Kelvin model of electrical signals. But instead of flowing electrons, they use flowing ions. Hard to believe from a perspective of electromagnetism. Perhaps it is time to apply these concepts of electromagnetism and energy flux to the human nervous system. Thank you for this welldone presentation of a complex subject.
Can you now explain how the human body transmit electricity in the nervous system or even in our brains. It is all electrical right. What happens when you connect Neuralink?
Derek is somewhat right about the time being roughly 1m/c for the bulb to light up but only because the parameters of the problem were picked to be tricky (sometimes fun and educative). Unfortunately Derek doesn't go into details in the video and only says that the bulb "won't receive the entire voltage of the battery immediately". This may mislead you into thinking that the signal speed in an electric circuit depends not on the length of wires but on the air distance to the switch, which is wrong. The signal speed in wires is roughly 50-95% of the speed of light and most often is what dictates how long it takes for something to turn on in most circuits. This is why, for example, matching copper trace lengths in PCBs is often important. Or why high frequency trading companies care about their internet cable lengths. HOWEVER, often in circuits there's significant wireless EM radiation, intentional (radio, wifi, microwave) or unintentional (reduced with EM shielding). Turns out that in Derek's circuit one side of the wire initially acts roughly like an antenna while the other acts like a receiver and the power transmitted could be enough to light up an LED bulb. At 100m it wouldn't.
@christopher békési Derek is not trying to explain the physics, he is merely reporting the results of a fantastically informative experiment he helped conceive that shows advances human understanding of an aspect of electromagnetic based energy transfer. His experimental results need to be accounted for in the revised explanation of electrical engineering.
@PCRetroProgrammer Causality isn't violated. You're just mistaken. Quite the personal incredulity. I don't know where you got the "MOST" when he did state in the video that it's only a fraction.
Thank god I'm not the only person who noticed the unit error. "1/c seconds" is not a unit of time. "1m/c" is. Come on people, this is basic arithmetic.
Since the energy moves from the battery to the light bulb outside of the wires, what role do the wires actually play? In other words, what is it that actually guides the energy to the light bulb? -why couldn’t the energy wind up somewhere else?
@MrBetaRayBill it's not a "secret", it's just that the level of math and physics required to understand these concepts is much higher than your average special relativity videos. Most people, while they might be interested, aren't that committed to this subject to learn entire semesters worth of physics in their free time.
@MrBetaRayBill yea but the study of magnetic field is complicated and the discovery of flowing current generating magnetic field itself was an accident. It’s usually taught in Advanced physics 2 in college and I don’t think it’s necessarily a secret due to students taking it in 3rd and 4th semester. As for the internet I don’t think many people either care for it or they just don’t know what they are looking for.
@Shameet XD Thanks for the reply. I'm guessing that there are a small sample of people who know this, right? Otherwise there's no way it could work on a large scale. Why do you think it's such a "secret"?
Basically wires provide a way for current to move which generates magnetic field and if the current doesn’t flow it cannot generate a magnetic field and if that happened it wouldn’t work.
I was first exposed to electrical concepts both in AC and DC when I went to Aviation Electrician School in the Marines. Forty-eight years later I taught these same basic concepts to high school students. THIS video is my first-ever exposure to HOW electrical energy is actually transmitted. My point is that the equations and methods used in solving PRACTICAL electrical problems (i.e., discounting, for example, the 'submarine cable' problem) requires NO knowledge of the physics of HOW electrical energy is transmitted, hence no attempt is ever made to teach it. Had an inquiring mind wanted to know, I think most teachers of basic electricity concepts who DID understand all that was said here would simply reply, "Believe me, you don't want to know. Too complex. Just accept that it somehow does."
When analyzing AC energy transfer using this paradigm, does this mean that the energy is being delivered to the destination in impulses as opposed to a constant rate, due to the time it takes for the fields to switch as the current switches? Or is the switch of current instantaneous so the field switch is instantaneous, and therefore there is a constant energy transfer in AC delivery as such in DC? Thanks
The part about AC was mindblowing. The Poynting vector is S = E x B but if both E and B are reversed, then S = (-E) x (-B) so the energy flow stays the same!
@sumilidero yes that is true! but by their own rules and logic if the resistance of the source is higher than the resistance it should circulate in the secondary circuit if a path is available
@sumilidero We have both. C being mainly what turns on the bulb, plus the series and mutual L of the wire (with negligable coupling coef.) over the 1 meter gap.
This is by far one of my favorite videos I've ever seen. I keep coming back to it and love telling people that electric doesn't actually flow through the wires like water in a pipe.
Derrick aporoach is not correct for every case. He is correct for the experiment setup he showed. Try it with a shielded cable and you will NEVER get this answer. Why? Read below FYI: I actually did it by measuring nano seconds pulse with an oscilloscope and delay was exactly length-of-wire/c seconds The pointing vector he mentioned doesn't travel directly through the space between the source and the sink, but it travels between the conductors carrying current. In his setup, the wires are streached apart on either side and thus pointing vectors are actually travelling through the space between wires. You should understand that majority of the power (via pointing vectors) travels closer to wire because the fields are stronger near wire. So the bulb will receive a small fraction of energy instantaneously (as Derrick said) and the remaining part will be delayed as it travels through the entire length of wire. Derricks bulb will lit 1meter/c seconds and achieve full brightness wire_length/c second later. He carefully termed it as impedance losses and thats what it is, conventional engineering logic still holds flawlessly with pointing vector. WHAT HAPPENS WITH SHIELDED CABLE? A shielded cable has positive and negative cables travelling togeather. As I said, the pointing vector travels between the space of wires. So the the power (via pointing vectors) has to travel through the space between the cables along the entire length of the cable. So the bulb will lit up wire_length/c second later. One can literally see this effects in nanosecond signalling where we always have to take account of the wire length for signal delay and synchronization. There is NO MISCONCEPTION ABOUT ELECTRICITY as well. Electricity reaches our house with positive and negative cables travelling togeather. The pointing vector travels between the cables along the entire length of powerline. So no matter how close you live to power station the power has to face the delay based on the length of cable.
It seems to me from what I know as an aircraft mechanic that this is not entirely correct however the solid references to electrical theory and principles. ions are exchanged between atoms, so you cannot say there is not a flow, it is more like the way the waves move and break on a beach.
While I agree that the fields are what carry the energy from source to load it is still the movement of the electrons that generates said fields. You can’t have one without the other in a circuit, therefore it is indirectly the electron that carry’s the energy. You should think of it like the fields are the medium through which the signal travels but it is the electron that is transmitting said signal by moving.
@L A I understand that electrons generate the electric field even while stationary but the magnetic field which is what allows energy to flow out side the wire is generated by the movement of electron. That’s what I was trying to say
the movement of electrons do not generate an electric field the electric field causes electrons to move. There is still an electric field when charges are stationary
Absolutely mind blowing. Thanks for this interesting insight that just never really has been stated so clearly. To think the energy needs the wire but actually to facilitate the electrical/magnetic fields around it rocks the world.
I'm 66 years old. As a child, we lived near large transmission lines in a rural area of CA. They passed over one of our pastures. We had a small water pump shed near the base of one of the towers. I "helped" my dad bury the power wires to the pump shed, 400 ft. from our barn/shop when he was installing a new pump. My dad used pipe strapping tape to mount some fluorescent tubes inside and outside of the shed. Everynight the lights were always on and I asked him why. He took me out to the shed, and asked me if I felt anyything... I realized that the hairs on my arms felt tingly, and I felt something in my ears. He explained about how such high voltage cables as above "induce" a magnetic field way around the big cables, that's what gives me the feelings, and what makes the tubes glow like they were wired to something. That had to have been 1960 /61- as I had just started 1st grade. He drew some sketches to show how "he thought" it worked. He gave me a basic electricity book and quizzed me every once in awhile. His sketches looked just like your graphics. I guess my dad WAS a lot smarter when I was younger. LOL
@Faladrin You'll just confuse yourself worrying about single particles. The effects we're concerned with here are bulk effects and it's important to understand the _magnitude_ of these effects to make any sense of what's going on. If you have a moving charge, then you may have a moving electric field locally, but by definition you have a current, and you can relate the magnitude of the magnetic field directly to the current, without having to try to estimate changes to electric fields in bulk materials and the consequent magnetic field induced. What I said about voltage creating electric fields isn't just "sort of right"; it's _exactly_ right, because the vector value of the electric field at any point is precisely the gradient of the potential at that point. regardless of where the voltage is coming from. For example, the voltage that arises from a changing magnetic field will create an electric field that you can characterise without having to work out the movement of charges in order to describe it. Of course the effects are inter-related, but the reason why I said what I said in the way that I said it is that in the extremes, you can have a large _static_ electric field that can induce a voltage along the length of a piece of wire without any associated magnetic field (as in static electricity), and you can have a large _static_ magnetic field created by a steady current without any associated electric field (as in superconducting coils). Although most of the time both electric and magnetic fields exist together, it is important to have a grasp of the relative magnitude of the effects of each one. If I'm trying to amplify very tiny signals, I may need to shield cables to prevent stray alternating electric fields from adding noise, but I also may need to eliminate earth loops to prevent picking up hum from mains-induced alternating magnetic fields. If I have an idea of the relative magnitudes of each effect, I can see how much effort I need to take in minimising each one, and where compromises have to be made. In some applications the issue of interference for electric fields may be negligible, in others we can ignore the magnetic fields, but we won't know unless we can appreciate the size of each effect.
@Rex Schneider Electric fields exist anytime you have an electric charge. That could be a single electron or a single proton. You can have a solitary electric point charge such as those particles. Anytime an electric field is moving or changing (so an electron moving or the potential/energy level of the electron is changing) you will have an equal but perpendicular magnetic field matching the electric field. Another way of saying it is a change in voltage or any current at all will result in a magnetic field. What you said about voltage creating electric fields is sort of right since any charge will have an electric field. And yes, current will create a magnetic field since that represents a changing electric field. But the way you said it suggests that these things are more different than they are (at least in respect to the relationship with magnetic fields).
Soundman-turned-teacher here. Hmm.. low/no impedance, no step-ups/step-downs, capacitors etc., so I'd say it'd be immediate.. my final answer C). ? Better listen now to my ♎'y so I may pass along what I've learned. Thank you, teacher! 🧠🙏🏻
That's quite interesting. I was never quite sure how electricity flowed before. It does make me wonder about household wiring (Romex). You can have separate cables touching, but not interfering with each other. I guess that's because either the magnetic fields around each wire is very small or that the insulation around each wire blocks the fields? Regardless, a non-contact voltage tester (NCVT) will detect current flowing through a wire as far as 1 inch away. How come the NCVT can detect current (magnetic field?) from 1 inch away, but 2 Romex cables that are in physical contact don't cause some sort of interference?
Even if that was how it works, that still isn't instantaneous. Electrons pushing each other would create a compression wave that moves through the electrons at the speed of sound in the electron medium.
I know you predicted pushback, and with good reason, so here it is. I’m not saying this video is wrong, but at best, it’s incomplete. First off, the fields can’t intrinsically be separated from the flow of charges as if the electron drift isn’t significant. For the magnetic fields to permeate free space in the first place, the charges must undergo acceleration to create them, and if you cut off the switch, the fields would collapse without the current. If I turned on a fan next to a piece of paper and the paper flew away, would it be accurate to say that the air alone did the deed? Sure, the energy that moved the paper was transferred to it by the air, but neglecting that the fan moved the air in the first place would be a glaring omission. It’s also essential to remember that the Poynting vector itself is DERIVED from the continuity equation (local conservation of charge), and what it represents is the interplay between the energy transfer among the fields and the movement of the charges that generate them. In other words, fields don’t carry energy on their own without the movement of charge. Also, the vast majority of energy transfer in the fields happens extremely close to the wires, and the graphic that you’ve given of these fields taking such wild departures away from the circuit ignores the infinitesimal magnitude by which this happens. With regards to your experiment, the following should be noted. Yes, there would be some current flow instantly with the closing of the switch, but only because the electric field in the conducting wire has had time to reach equilibrium along its length. If instead of a switch, you connected the wires to the leads of the battery directly, the propagation of the electric field along the circuit would occur at a speed less than that of light in free space. Lastly, I challenge you to explain the energy release from the actual light bulb that doesn’t involve electrons flowing through the filament. Also, I posted the following as a reply further on in this thread, but I'm putting it here because it's important. The power (energy per time) that a circuit puts out is always IV (current times voltage). This relation makes no reference to fields of any sort. Now, 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. For example, wrapping the wires in a grounded sheet of aluminum foil creates shielding, which is how high transmission data cables such as CAT6 or COAX reduce noise and capacitance between wires. You could say that they contain the electric fields within the space of the insulation. You could also coil the wires into an electromagnet. However you reconfigure the fields themselves, the fact is that the overall power dissipation of a circuit depends on the current, not on the field strength, and to trivialize this fact by focusing on how the energy is carried is confusing and misleading. As with my earlier analogy to a fan blowing air, the energy may be carried away by the air, but the amount of that energy depends solely on the power output of the fan. Ultimately this video has some good information, but it is also extremely misleading, and I caution people to take any claims that “they way you understand things is false” with a grain of salt. Usually, there’s more nuance than that, and as something of a cynic myself, I think it’s often a form of clickbait. I encourage interested viewers to look elsewhere for the full picture of electrodynamics in all its beauty.
@Marc Fruchtman Ty for saving my sanity. I was questioning the DC battery. Bcs I know that energy flows around the wires mostly in AC high voltage systems.
@warrenwilson You said " Lastly, I challenge you to explain the energy release from the actual light bulb that doesn’t involve electrons flowing through the filament", what energy release is this?
your comment is boring to read so ill just leave this as a belief, so dont get too upset. fields exist 'instantaneously'. perception of that isnt a scientific aspect. you simply arent in the fields instant area of influence until you are. the 'until you are' part is simply based on perception. the field exists where it exists as it exists. its not a production, its just an 'is'. like space.
Thanks for explaining this better. I wanted to call bullish but I didn't have the education. I need thick thick wires to move DC current over distance - the channel is saying "throw resistance out the window" for this experiment... which means throw out any real load and throw out distance (so why not throw out wires entirely).
If the current in the wire generates the fields, but the fields carry the energy, then the current caused the energy flow. Current × (voltage drop across entire circuit) = power (rate of energy use). If the energy is NOT being carried by the wire, why do we need heavy-gauge wire in our homes, rather than cheap, thin wire? Because wire has resistance in the real world, so high currents will generate more heat in a thin wire, melting it. However, if the energy is carried by the fields, not the wire, why can't we use cheap, thin wire? If, to create those "powerful fields" that carry a lot of energy, the WIRE must carry a lot of current, then.... Current × (voltage drop across circuit) = power, which is energy/unit of time. Power × Time = Energy So, if the wires carry current, then they transmit power. Over a span of time, they've supplied energy to the device. Magnetic fields are present, but are NOT doing WORK unless you pass a conductor in a closed circuit through them. The video is wrong.
From the diagram presented from my understanding it looks like 1 light Seconds is halfway from the moon so that would make me think that it's 4 seconds in total
But Google in how many light seconds from the Earth to the moon it says 1.3 so I would think that it's Right over 3 Light seconds Oops I mean right over 2.5 light seconds..
Had to watch this vid 3 times just to make sure I wasnt hearing wrong but man u just cleared up a lot of misconception. Now I gotta go and look for some basics of electrical engineering bc u sparked my curiosity. Thank you
I never studied electricity beyond basic electronics, but this was my concept: The wires already contain the electrons, only the "potential" is necessary to move them. I believed the potential would be instantaneous, which would likely be the speed of light. This video demonstrates why AM radios perform so poorly in the vicinity of electrical lines.
My grandmother lived on a very remote and isolated island in Norway. When they first got electricity, they had one lightbulb connection hanging from the ceiling in the best living-room (it was only used when having fine visitors). The thing was that when the electrician first lay out the cables, they had no bulb to put in the socket. Also the electricity was not yet connected to the house but would be soon. So each night they put a bucket under the empty socket just in case the electricity would be connected while they was sleeping. Not to spill anything on the floor.
Brilliant story. When people insist on comparing the way electricity circuits work to the way water flows in a hose I explain that . . . . . . if you CUT THE HOSE all the water spills out until the water source is deplenished (ie the tank is empty) . . . . . . . . . . however if you CUT THE WIRE the electrical circuit simply stops conducting and the energy source is NOT deplenshed (i.e. the battery remains good).
@michange3141592 That sounds like Romper Room on TV in the 1950’s. They brainwashed us that they could see into our living rooms With their magic mirror. The purpose was to see if we were being good or bad. Actually whether we were “Do-Bees” or “Don’t-Bees. “ Ha ha ha it’s true. 💁♀️🌹
@michange3141592 hehe my mother saw a television the first time when her father brought here with him to visit someone in the city. After a good long while she ask her father why they had a small man inside a box
I always thought of it as if the wire was a pipe that was already full. So that pressure at one end, from your source, pushes the electrons already at the other end out.
Nothing is as it seems, everything is an analogy. In 100 years everything we know will be wrong. And all we said is impossible will be $9.99 at Walmart.
I learned that although electrons do move slow, the delivery of the energy is fast. An analogy of a row of pool balls was made where they were lined up in a row. If you strike one at one end, the pool ball at the other end would receive a hit immediately cause it was passed on rapidly.
If I remember my undergrads physics lessons correctly, there is no energy flow (or the Poynting vector has a zero norm) outside of a coaxial cable because magnetic field is confined within the cable. With a simple copper wire, the magnetic field aroundthe wire would not be zero but VERY quickly vanishing radially in norm. With a big enough wire and current, you might see the light bulb light up when held close enough to the wire. Other than that it is delusional to think that the energy flow would flawlessly close a 1-meter gap without needing enormous current that is clearly not achievable with a standard battery in this kind of setup. This does not invalidate the point that he tries to make: the energy is indeed carried by the combination of electric and magnetic field. But the video is misleading because it lets you think that this energy flow will just always follow the shortest path in space with no respect for the geometry of the circuit. This would only be true if the intensity of the current was so huge that the magnetic field would reach over to the light bulb. In practice, it would be so negligible at a 1-meter distance (with this kind of current) that the vast majority of the energy will still be carried by the electric/magnetic fields running alongside the wire, thus taking a whole second to turn on the light bulb. Sorry for any potential grammar/english mistakes.
Thank you. I've only studied A Level physics but the theory he's presenting seems very questionable. I've seen many comments from people who are taking this at face value to assume that all energy travels in the empty space between a power source and its load. Especially since the clickbait thumbnail says energy doesn't flow in wires.
@hoeseph He said he's (idealistically) assuming no resistance in the wire, but it would go a bit further to assume that the laws of inductance are changed as well.
To be fair if the circuit could power a light bulb over the distance of an entire light second then it is also probably strong enough to jump the 1m gap
Thanks for the video! Now I finally got the full picture of what my physics teacher was teaching us. I was left confused over how electricity and light were connected, could not connect the dots, until now. Thanks! Got a question though: 1) If we take two batteries and place them close to each other and now place 2 laptops that we want to be charged further away from them. Now if we connect these laptops to the batteries, but in a way where each laptop will be be connected to the furthermost battery, so that the energy from the first battery will have to travel to the laptop through the other battery and repeat it for the other side. We now should have 2 instances of energy moving in opposite directions. This will bring to my question. Will or will not the two instances of energy "collide" with each other, canceling each other out and causing the laptops to not charge or charge slower? Or does the energy consist of no particles, meaning that no collison can happen? Please answer!😊
Doctor, I respect your knowledge, and still must say....I've lived my entire life in and around electricity. Bet my life, in some cases on what My Voltmeter, ohm meter, and Amp meter said. And your video blows that to infinity. I can't wrap my head around what you are saying based on my life's experiences
OK. Let's say we have 1 light year long wires. When we switch on the circuit and light bulb is 1 meter from us, does it light up instantaneously? And when light bulb is 1 light year away, does it light up after 1 year passed?
That's a great video about power transmission! I remember being surprised by that in the university. I really don't like the 1/c answer, though. While it's technically true that there will be some voltage on the lightbulb after 1/c simply because the electromagnetic fields generated around the wire will reach it, but it has nothing to do with them being connected by wires. In the same way, you can say that turning on this battery will "turn on" every single lightbulb on the planet. This is also technically true, because there will be some field generated by the battery in the entire space, and it will induce some voltage everywhere. Although its value will be negligibly small, as the magnitude of fields around the wire quickly drop with the distance from it. Only after 1 second, the proper connection through the electromagnetic mode of the wire will be established. If you replace the wire with an ideal coaxial cable (which doesn't let any EM fields outside the inner space between the two conductors), the answer will always be 1 second, as there's no leakage and thus no way for the lightbulb to receive the EM energy from outside the incoming cable.
@Fourth Root Agreed! Dereck was using expert-speak here, perhaps appropriate for talking with physicists. But he's supposed to be informing beginners, not speaking jargon with fellow experts. It's only 3.3nS or "1/c" in seconds, because of the 1M gap, and this improper use of units keeps the fact hidden.
I didn’t know how to comment in beginning but none of the above . I wonder if conservation officers that guard nature today will be responsible for the conservation of energy in the future ?
Excellent video - very impressed by the data and the presentation - well done! I do have a question that has been plaguing me though. Many videos describe the whole 'spacetime' effect, and the overarching theory being that the closer something gets to the speed of light, the more time slows down - to the extent that at the speed of light, time for the object in motion basically stops. If this theory is correct, then surely for a photon, electric current, or radio wave, which travel at the speed of light, shouldn't time effectively stop from their perspective, meaning regardless of distance, time taken would be instantaneous? I guess we know from long distance communication, that there is a (significant) time delay between sending and receiving a signal, and getting a response back (as you describe in your 1 way speed of light video with communication to Mars), but this theory of spacetime appears wrong when compared to observed communication with distant objects. I'm not a physicist, so have obviously got something, no doubt very basic, missing from my understanding - could you explain why the speed/time theory is not applicable or wrong when it comes to photons/current/radio waves? It could make a great video IMHO. I'm sure it has something to do with relativity, and the difference between the observer and the observed - but cannot get my head around light taking just over 8 minutes to get from the Sun to Earth, if the photon of light has only moved through space, and not time, because it's travelling at the speed of light. Is it the photon hasn't aged during it's travels, but we have? Thanks in advance for any insight :D
I have a question: Let's say the far end of that 300,000km wire was cut, then the light bulb wouldn't turn on, so in 1/c seconds I would learn that a cable that is half a light second away from me is cut. Doesn't this violate the idea that information can only travel at the speed of light?
@Kanat The electrons would have very little to do with the light coming on. The initial current in the wire would induce a small counter current in the bulb and it might light up if the voltage is high enough, but the current would quickly stop once the length of the wire's voltage levels out to match the battery and once the wire reaches a steady state the induced current in the other wire would zero out. The voltage/current at any point from induction would be a tiny fraction of the full current in the initial wire. This is why the video is largely wrong. If you remove induction it is completely wrong and I think it's quite disingenuous to suggest most people who know anything at all about electricity don't understand induction.
@PMI Golf Wouldn't work too well. The wire would burn up in the earth's EM field and if the wire was strong enough not to get burn up it would be like hitting the rocket it was attached to with lightning. The idea of a space elevator faces this same problem as a long tube of metal going up through the atmosphere like that would have different fields at the top and bottom which is means you'd get current running through it. So a wire is pretty much a no-go as it would get zapped and fry, and an elevator would have to be made of non-conductive materials (which is certainly possible, but likely not cheap).
The "information" is not the wire. It's the bulb. It's the bulb because it's the bulb that gives you the answer. So, if the bulb is only 1m away, you need to wait 1 meter over C to determine if the circuit is closed OR if it's open. It's obvious that you need to wait the proper amount of time for the light to come on in the case of a closed circuit. But even if the circuit is open due to a cut at any point in the wire, you need to wait 1m over C to be sure it's open (assuming you don't observe the cut yourself if it's nearby ie: less than 1 meter away). That's because the speed of light is constant. No matter where the cut is, even if it's just a nanometer away from the battery, your "information" point is the bulb, so you need to wait the appropriate amount of time to know it will not turn on.
@Jeroen de Jong Sorry looks like you are too far from physics. Let me try to explain - when you ask physics questions you assume certain things. For other things if you use something else that understood commonly you should explain explicitly. For example - you may assume that wires do not have resistance. Fine. But when you ask "when you detect bulb to light" by default it means certain thing - that enough current goes through the bulb. Otherwise answer to this question could anything. For example "bulb will start to light even before with turned switch on. How? Simply it reacts to radio wave, and there is radio transmitter behind the corner" This is not a physics question - this is kiddish way to ask "tricky" puzzles. If by bulb you mean oscilloscope that detects micro volts and micro amperes then clearly say so, not to ask about "bulb". I hope this is clear. So question is precisely designed to mislead. It could be fine for funny video, but completely unacceptable for science population video.
"current", being moving charges, moves through the wire. That just isn't were the energy moves. But the amount of energy still depends on the current. So by controlling the current you control the energy flow.
Great video. Thanks very much. In addition to the excellent visualations and the story of the failure of the first trans Atlantic cable, I was reminded of the genius of the early pioneers of electricity. Maxwell (1831-1879) worked it out on paper before the technology existed to prove him right!
1. So there is an energy field between every electric device in my house and the electricity pole on the streets? 2. Would have appreciated if you could show the electric and magnetic field of that huge circuit 3. So the 2 points on the circuit where the charges interchange are the poles of the energy field? Answers are appreciated.
Still having one doubt: I understand that energy doesn't need to travel through the whole circuit, but how does the light bulb know it's a closed circuit when you flip the switch? Let's say the wire is cut off somewhere very far away from the switch and the light bulb, information should still take time to travel instead of instantaneous. Unless it will work even if it's not a closed circuit, but this doesn't make sense either. It's like I can just flip a switch near a light bulb and it will magically work without a closed circuit. I know it may work without a closed circuit like a transformer, but this setup is not like that at all. Also, mentioned by Rick K in the comments: If this is true, then why don't we use that effect for "faster than light" data transfer? If the light bulb "reacts" to the switch almost instantly, that would mean that the "information" transferred with the flip of the switch is also transmitted instantly.
@ObservantPirate+ You make two assumptions: 1. The cat is alive. 2. The cat can communicate in your language. I'm just going to hint that you can ask that question. You just won't ever get an answer, alive or dead.
Hi. What about a circuit with a million mile. The bulb come on the same 1/c? I don't think so.The energy is push from plant station all away not jump ,I think this guy saw to many SF movie's The energy go thru the wire with light speed ,thats it ,if is carry or not by electrons don't matter, is around the electrons ,with out electrons the energy can't move.
Infromation along a cable to the other side of the earth does not move through the cable with speed around the earth but through the middle of the earth, namely along the shortest path through space-time with c.
I’ve been working with electrical systems for many years and you make perfect sense. It’s almost like we’ve only discovered the wind mill but don’t understand anything. It just works. In the Navy we called it P.F.M.
