Electrodynamic Waves

Brian Whittaker

Description

Brian Whittaker, a retired government scientist investigates a controversial and unfashionable area of physics; scalar electric waves. Some believe that they do not even exist, others that they might well exist but that they are unimportant.In this book Brian offers a scalar wave (i.e. true electrodynamic wave, not electromagnetic wave) theory based on simple electrostatics; and a series of experiments, which not only prove the existence of these waves but also reveal their unusual properties.Regarding practical applications, anyone interested in the possibility of radio communication in unusual circumstances, for example through the earth beneath our feet, through miles of seawater and even through the human body should read this book. The possibility of wireless transmission of kilowatts of electrical power over short distances is also demonstrated and discussed.

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• Physics

Informations

• Publié par: Brown Dog Books
• Date de parution: 02 juin 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839521553
• Langue: English

Extrait

Electrodynamic Waves
Electrodynamic Waves
Wireless transmission through air, metals, water, and the human body
BRIAN WHITTAKER
First published 2020
Copyright © Brian Whittaker 2020
The right of Brian Whittaker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk

ISBN printed book: 978-1-83952-154-6 ISBN e-book: 978-1-83952-155-3
Cover design by Kevin Rylands Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound in the UK This book is printed on FSC certified paper
CONTENTS
1: Introduction
2: Background Physics
3: Statics and Dynamics
4: Em Radio Waves
5: Magnetodynamic (MD) Waves
6: Sine Waves
7: Oscillators
8: Electrodynamic Waves
9: Electrodynamic Antennas
10: Practical Electrodynamic Antennas
11: Scalars and Vectors
12: Early Qualitative Results
13: Dielectrics
14: Transmission Mechanism
15: Transmitted Power
16: Inverse-Square Laws
17: Transmission in Air
18: Inverse-Cube Laws
19: Ed Transmission through Water
20: Ed Waves in the Environment
21: Transmitters
22: Resonant Transformers
23: High-Voltage Resonant Transformers
24: Example 25-Watt Resonant Transformer
25: Tesla Generators
26: Safety
27: Summary
28: Information Sources
Appendix
About the Author
1: INTRODUCTION
We are all very familiar with normal wireless waves, the kind received by radios, television sets and cell telephones. They receive electromagnetic (EM) waves ranging in frequency (how many cycles per second) from 100 kilohertz (kHz) to 100 gigahertz (GHz) (1 hertz = 1 cycle per second). These waves are transmitted through the air by means of antennas.
TV antennas, satellite dishes and all the devices we use to receive EM waves are tuned as closely as possible to the respective transmitting frequencies.
Electromagnetic waves serve us very well but they cannot pass through metals, a fact that is often noticeable when driving under a road bridge whilst listening to your car radio. Also, very short waves cannot pass through hills and mountains so cell phones can fail. EM waves of all but the longest wavelengths cannot go very far through sea water because sea water (like metals) conducts electricity very well so oscillating electric fields are strongly absorbed. This limits the communication range between divers and submariners. Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism predicts that this should be so (see Appendix ).
This book is about a different kind of electric wave that can pass through metals and other conducting materials like sea water and even the earth beneath our feet. I will call them electrodynamic, ED waves.
Regarding EM waves I remember the 1940s when most households had a radio, a ‘wireless set’, as they were called then, that was the main source of the latest news and entertainment. The ‘sets’ were (unlike telephones) a way of communicating without wires, hence their name. But although wireless they did in those days depend on long-wire ‘aerials’ (antennas) for picking up the wireless stations. The aerials were usually erected outside in the open air, and they were often made as long as possible and placed as high as possible.
As a boy I made two or three ‘crystal sets’ that could pick up strong radio transmissions like the BBC Home Service. With little more than a coil of wire, a variable condenser, a pair of headphones, the all-important crystal and ‘cat’s whisker’ * I could grab a little of the radio wave energy that passed through the air around me and decode it into sound. Amazingly, no batteries were needed but two essential additions were a good earth connection to our household plumbing system and a long-wire aerial. To me it seemed almost magical.
* The crystals were selected pieces of the natural minerals galena (lead sulphide) or iron pyrite (iron sulphide) that acted as semiconductors. The cat’s whisker, a small length of bare copper wire formed one contact to the crystal and, if correctly placed (that was the tricky bit!), you had a high-frequency diode (rectifier) capable of demodulating the radio carrier wave. Presently, tiny silicon ‘signal diodes’ are available that do the same job without the hassle .
Having made crystal sets the next obvious step for anyone interested in wireless at that time was to make and test valve radios. I was not ready for that; it was something I would do later in life but, as it happened, my father, an electrician who later became an electrical engineer, built a breadboard * valve radio. It had a built-in DC power supply operating at about 300 volts, two radio frequency amplifier stages separately tuned by means of two (non - ganged!) variable condensers, and a powerful audio output stage feeding a loudspeaker. Because of the separated tuning condensers, station selection was quite difficult; it was a little like trying to open a two-digit combination lock without knowing the numbers, but, once done, the set could pick up not only all the British BBC stations, but several foreign transmissions as well.
* Literally a breadboard! All components screwed down on a breadboard .
Using my father’s home-made wireless set I discovered something that struck me as very strange: tuning into the weak foreign stations I found that reception greatly improved if I touched the aerial terminal! Somehow my body was acting as an antenna.
Note: Modern medium- and longwave radios do not need aerials and earth connections. They use internal ferrite rod antennas for the lower frequencies and ‘whip antennas’ for high-frequency FM reception .
Many years later, 2014 to be precise, and retired from a career as a government scientist, and with some free time I decided to investigate that strange ‘body aerial’ phenomenon, but with sophisticated electronic test equipment only dreamed of in the 1940s: a dual-channel storage oscilloscope, a signal generator and a good ham radio with a very wide frequency range and, most importantly, an external antenna input.
The purpose of this book is to outline my experimental work and results – some, I have to say, unusual and I believe well worth further study.
This is not a textbook and I aim to make it generally readable and interesting but inevitably I must include some physics and some mathematics. I will try to minimise those aspects with general readership in mind.
2: BACKGROUND PHYSICS
Physics textbooks give little or no information on electrodynamic waves, indeed one might be forgiven for thinking that they do not exist!
Maxwell’s famous theory of electromagnetism unifies electric and magnetic theory and explains electromagnetic waves , such as radio waves, light and X-rays. A triumph of mathematics well covered in degree - level physics textbooks, it does in my view create the impression that magnetism and electricity are always part and parcel of the same thing. With changing magnetic and electric fields this is largely true; however, Maxwell himself did recognise the existence of a purely electrodynamic current in a capacitor that he referred to as ‘displacement current’. Sure enough, it is known that this current can create an external changing magnetic field, but the point is that within the confines of the capacitor itself the current is purely electrodynamic. Therefore, electrodynamic currents exist and it seems reasonable to speculate that electrodynamic waves might also exist. But if they exist, we must prove that they exist!
In this book I hope to prove their existence and outline their properties.
Most textbooks certainly contain information on electrostatics . In my opinion a thought - experiment is all that is needed to add a time element and conclude that another field of study is missing: Electrodynamics , ED .
I will explain how electrostatics should lead to electrodynamics .
3: STATICS AND DYNAMICS
Electrostatic phenomena (think of your dry hair standing on end when combed, or hand-rubbed balloons sticking to the ceiling) are of course very well known and the subject of electrostatics is taught in science classes at secondary-school level through to physics degree level, so I will not describe here any advanced aspects of that subject that do not relate directly to ED .
Consider an electrically charged metal sphere suspended in free space. Electrostatics tells us that an electric field surrounds the sphere extending uniformly and radially in all directions. The field strength * depends on the electrical charge on the sphere and the radial distance from its centre. The direction of the field depends on whether the sphere is positively charged or negatively charged. The field is static and the science that applies is electrostatics .
* The electrostatic field at a point in space is described in two ways; firstly, as a voltage at that point, a scalar , and secondly as a voltage gradient, voltage change per unit distance; a vector.
Now consider the same sphere with a varying charge, swinging from positive through zero to negative then back to positive, repeatedly, again and again, in other words we now have an oscillating charge. The external field still exists but it is now time-variant: it is an electrodynamic (ED) field.
Although a time element has been introduced at any given instant in time the basic concepts of electrostatics should apply, for example in free space * the ED field should be radial with respect to the centre of the sphere and any force exerted on a separate charged object should obey an inverse-square law.
* Free space is an important concept