2571: "Hydraulic Analogy"

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ratammer
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2571: "Hydraulic Analogy"

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Title text: Current (water) running through the water (wires) causes it to boil, increasing the pressure (voltage), but resisting (impeding) the flow of hydroelectricity (water currents). This is the basis for Ohm's law.

Ohm's next law is gonna be "don't do that".
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wbeaty
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Re: 2571: "Hydraulic Analogy"

Post by wbeaty »

For decades we've been calling it "Hydricity." Electricity flows in electric devices, "hydricity" flows in the hydraulic analog.

What is electricity? First define the word! Large groups of experts cannot agree on a single scientific definition, even though Maxwell/Faraday/Millikan/Thompson/Einstein all agree, saying that Electricity is not a form of energy, and is to be measured in coulombs only. In that case, a flow of electricity is called "an electric current." All conductors are filled with coulombs of electricity ...but their electricity is movable, that's what makes them conductive. Copper metal contains about 13,000 coulombs of mobile electrons per cc, so the size of one coulombs is a bit smaller than a grain of table-salt. If you have a copper wire which is the width of that salt-grain, then during a one-ampere current, the coulombs are moving slowly along, at a rate of one salt-grain-sized hunk per second. That's about one amp, in #30 wire, and quickly heats up, meaning ...if we could see the electricity inside wires, and it was moving fast enough for humans to perceive the motion, it always means that the wires are getting hot. If the current isn't heating the wires, then the electricity is moving more like the speed of the minute-hand on a clock.

The electric company does not deliver any electricity, because the electricity only wiggles slightly back and forth in an AC system, so they take back everything they've sent to you. Even worse, electricity always flows in a closed loop, neither created nor destroyed, which means they've already taken all the electricity back simultaneously, while sending it out! This once caused great trouble at Niagara Falls, when the US and Canada were drawing up agreements to interconnect their power grids, and sell back and forth. What were they selling? They called in a bunch of high-school science teachers, trying to legally change the definition of "electricity," so they could officially measure it in joules rather than coulombs. Good thing they didn't involve RP Feynman. He would have seen it as a golden opportunity to officially get the name of electrical energy changed to "Wakalaxies." ("Energy is just a word! Learning the word tells you nothing! It might as well be 'Wakalaxies.'")

Back in the age of steam, typical transmission lines were leather belts, and still things are the same, but the molecules of the drive belt have been replaced with the mobile electrons which naturally occur inside solid copper. Yet some Victorian transmission lines were very long wooden rods, hooked in series for longer length, and they were driven back and forth.

So, an AC ligno-cellulosic power line.

"Op-ticity" comes out of the end of your laser-pointer.

If we replace all the wires with long ferrite rods, then spin-waves are flying along those rods, and you'll plug your devices into a mag-tricity outlet. Or, use ferro-ceramic instead, barium titanate rods, or high-K PZT, and then the cables will be conducting Maxwellian Displacement Current only.

What comes out of the end of your dremel tool, when you attach one of those long gooseneck power coupling thingies? MECHANICITY. Father in law had installed the drive section of a blender into the kitchen counter. Just a 2in hole was visible. An outlet for mechanical energy. Don't stick your finger in the mechanicity outlet, or you might lose it.
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