Can a static electric field do work?

[sparks]

   Can the electric field do work?  Say we have a free electron in a vacuum tube emitted in the middle of the tube by a heated filament.  Then we extract the filament leaving the free electron floating there (well moving a little due to gravity)
Then we apply  dc between the anode and cathode and charge up the capacitance developed by the tube.  Will the electron move?  If it does how does the energy to move it get there and from where does this energy come from?  Wouldn't this be an effect from afar.  Are there little particles that push the electron.  If there are then where did these little particles come from and where are they going.  Were they hanging around in the metal before it was charged or did they get dragged in and out along with the electrons. Is the electron moving in a stream of these little particles like a fish in a river current or is there like some fisherman with a hooked fish reeling it in?  Really need to answer these questions and would like to hear your thoughts.

[canufi]

Quote from Physics website: "When work is done by a conservative electric field on a test charge, then the charge will lose EPE and gain KE. This is written mathematically as

WE field = - DEPE = DKE
Since E is a conservative field, this is merely a restatement
of the Law of Conservation of Energy."

Therefore once the electron moves through the circuit the field needs to be continually charged up by household or car battery supply.  It's not a static field, the word "static" is nonsense.  Electricity is not static, lightning moves and there is current when lightning strikes.

Charging up a comb with wool to produce static electricity requires energy be added.

[canufi]

http://home.roadrunner.com/~enloephysics/potential.htm

"In a electric field, it (energy) is the work done to move a positive or negative charge of magnitude "q" against the electric field. "

[canufi]

As stated in my youtube videos the work being done in Stan's device would be the molecules themselves, ramming electrons into the positive field when molecules spin and move through brownian motion. Voltage isn't performing work, the molecules would be. We know for a fact that molecules move at room temperature very fast.  That would be a way to utilize work - by using kinetic movement of molecules.

However this begs the question of what energy source is being drained if molecules are performing work.  Normally if a molecule is slowed down it directly relates to heat - which means it should cool down, hence my continual harping on the fact that Stan's device remains at room temperature instead of cooling down.

[sparks]

As stated in my youtube videos the work being done in Stan's device would be the molecules themselves, ramming electrons into the positive field when molecules spin and move through brownian motion. Voltage isn't performing work, the molecules would be. We know for a fact that molecules move at room temperature very fast.  That would be a way to utilize work - by using kinetic movement of molecules.

However this begs the question of what energy source is being drained if molecules are performing work.  Normally if a molecule is slowed down it directly relates to heat - which means it should cool down, hence my continual harping on the fact that Stan's device remains at room temperature instead of cooling down.

   My understanding is that energy was quantified and exists as a photon.  The photon can be described as both a particle and a wave.  When observing a photon as a wave it is an electric field propogating through time and space.  When observed as a particle it carries inertia.  When an electron becomes excited or ejected from an atom it absorbs the photon.  When it returns to the atom or slows down it generates a photon.  What I am not sure about is the process of photon absorption by matter.  How is a photon absorbed by an electron?  The ultraviolet light photon wavelength is the most successful at ionization of oxygen.  The wavelength of the photon has to have some geometric  relationship to the atom otherwise the photon is scattered or fluresced by the matter it comes in contact with.  Then there is the case where the photon is absorbed and readmitted from the matter at a shorter wavelength then when it went in.  This apparently cools the matter.  Thermal photons are those photons continually absorbed and radiated by electron oscillations within the atomic structure.  The atom is contiually expanding and contracting it's field of influence.  This also happens with molecular bound atoms.  These thermal photons can be exchanged between colliding molecules and give rise to pressure and heat.