Negative resistance via pyroclay.com material ?

[armagdn03]

I think I will at this time elaborate a little better on the transverse / longitudinal structure and relationship between the two types of electrical energy and how energy can be actually created in the process.

As you know these longitudinal electric waves send energy foreward using compressed and decompressed "waves" while transverse electrical waves are the "rolling" sinusoidal waves we are all familiar with.

Here is the part that I have heard very few say, but holds TONS of weight, some may already know it, but others are probably hearing this for the first time and are gonna blow a few brain cells.

Excluding DC, how do you define the "size" of the energy you are reading in each wave? Or put another Way, how do you determine the maximum amount of energy characteristic of the wave? In our transverse rolling waves, this measurement is known as "amplitude". When you increase the volume of your stereo, you are not changing any characteristic of the wave other than its amplitude..... frequency, wavelength, all stay the same.

Now I'm going to take a step back and give a little background so that we can apply what we observed above to longitudinal waves.

Think of a capacitor. How does it work? what does the dielectric do? Well because quantum mechanics says that electrons are not really in one place at a time  (until measured  ) we cam see them as an electron cloud. Normally when we apply a potential across a sea of these clouds, they want to follow the direction of the field. This electron movement is our preception of electricity. In a capacitor, there is a positive plate and a negative plate. The electron clouds in the dielectric are not able to move only stretch (because it is a conductor). When the field is applied they stretch out storing energy, then when the capacitor is shorted they snap back to a more natural state and release the energy.

Knowing this we can take a look at longitudinal waves. They are the compression and decompression of the electron gas. NOT the movement of it! They are the stretching and unstreatching of the clouds of electrons just like in a capacitor!

Wow that explains alot! so if we were to try and use a really good conductor to send longitudinal waves what would happen? a potential or voltage is applied the electrons stretch a little and then begin to move. We have to stop the potential before movement of the electrons, which is why pulse duration is so important. This is why highly resistive elements work so well!!!! The electrons simply cannot move as well, so they are more responsive to staying in one place and changing shape, or stretching rather than moving to a different location.

So now that we know this, we want more power!!!! right? we crazy humans always want more....so how do we get more energy out of a longitudinal wave? we increase its amplitude....duh.

Bigger amplitude means we need to get the clouds to bunch up closer, and separate farther. the best way to do this is to squeeze and pull the electrons to deform as fast as we can, if we are too slow we get electron movement, which kills our source dipole (battery, power supply what ever) This is why high frequency, super sharp pulses are used. One great way to do this is a park gap. The plasma discharge of a spark gap is a really quick punch to the electron cloud and before the electron has time to move back from the punch, its taken away, so it gets compressed but not moved.
Kind of like being hit with a car..........if you get hit going 10 miles an hour, first you compress a little, because inertia doesn't want you to move, then you slide 2 -3 feet. This is how our circuits work now. But, what if you get hit by a car going 200 miles an hour, that the moment it hits you, retreats just as fast as it came. You would compress very much, maybe explode, but your body would not go far. This effect would be even better in water, where the water restricts your forward movement, just like how resistive materials increase the effect of our transverse waves.

Knowing this I would venture to say that its not just resistive materials that work best for transmission, it would be resistive materials that have very high permeability's, or constants K (known for capacitor design)

Hope this helps a few people out.


Also, I dint think that stray RF signals would mess with the power regulation of such a simple power supply, but to be sure could he not run the spark gap in a Faraday cage? also if this were the case, would the contacts from the brushes to the rotor being broken and reestablished during rotation not cause harmonic rich RF interference that would affect power supplies all the time? they dint seem to!

[Earl]

The electron clouds in the dielectric are not able to move only stretch (because it is a conductor).
The electron clouds in the dielectric are not able to move only stretch (because it is a not a conductor).

Typo

Earl

By the way, I like your above post, very good explanation.

[armagdn03]

thanks for pointing that out! that one could have definitly confused people!

[argona369]

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[Earl]

The doubts of Tissyburger about RF getting into the power supply is a good, valid point and can be best cleared up by using a battery.

In fact, FE experimenters should get in the habit of ONLY using batteries and NEVER using regulated power supplies.

One could say that the RF generated by the commutator would also confuse the regulated power supply, if it was that sensitive.  Would the arcing around or through a glass bead cause more RFI than a commutator?  Only the shadow knows.  Of course, if the glass bead is a negative resistor, it can very easily oscillate with whatever inductance and capacitance it can find.  Should this be the case, there might be several simultaneous oscillations going on all at the same time.  The RF spectrum might look just awful on a sprectrum analyzer. The motor commutator is modulating the negative resistance oscillator, which then modulates the [no more] regulated power supply, which then modulates the .........
By using a battery as a control check, the circuit complexity can be reduced and anomolies more easily identified, if still present.

Regards, Earl