RE: Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter - Part 4: Power distribution

[biophil]

Let me see if I've got this straight (I've never gotten an explanation of Tesla from an actual Tesla fan, so I have some catching up to do):

1. Single-wire power transmission is enabled by simply putting the load between the source and a reactance (capacitance or inductance; his sketch labels this "capacitance"). I believe this. There are some interesting practical implementation questions (does each device have its own reactance? Each house? Each neighborhood?), but it squares with what I know of electricity.
2. Because the Earth is a good conductor, we can simply replace the wire with the Earth. On some level, I believe this; it's why grounding rods work.
3. What do you do about the Earth's reactance? You can't do single-wire transmission without Alternating Current, but with AC, you get losses due to capacitance and inductance. If the Earth is reactive, it would be like you put a second capacity reservoir between the alternator and the light bulb in Tesla's diagram. My guess is the reactance is absolutely huge, but maybe I'm wrong. How do you get around that? Maybe it's not an issue if the Earth's reactance is low enough.

I left our last conversation hanging; you had sent me a link to a paper by a friend of yours talking about some problems with Maxwell. I looked at the paper, and I would love to digest it and understand it, but I'm not very well versed in EM theory so it would take more time than I have to spare at the moment.

Comments

[mage00000]

Great to see some genuine interest in this work! Let me see if I can help you with this.

1. It is true that you can use a capacitive or inductive reactance, but some nuance has to be added. If you have a theoretical 0 capacitance and x (>0) inductance, it would not work because there is no 'incentive', no reason for a current to flow through the inductance. It has to flow to somewhere and therefore some capacitance is needed. What people tend to forget is that every conductor has some capacitance, i.e. you need some charge on it to create a voltage and the ratio charge over voltage is capacitance. A coil is a conductor and so it has some capacitance, but it also has inductance (obviously). So if you suddenly raise the voltage on one end of the coil, leaving the other side unconnected, a current will start to flow through the coil to evenly distribute the added charges. Because of the coils inductance however the current will continue to flow after this equal distribution has been established, and a higher voltage (twice as high as the input voltage you used) will appear at the open end of the coil. From that moment the current will start flowing back until the open end is back at zero volt and this process will repeat at the coils natural resonance frequency. The best way to get power from it is by using the voltage difference between both ends of the coil. (I have a picture of such a set up, but I think you'll understand)
2. Tesla does not say this with so many words but I believe he intended to give every device its own capacitance. You are more or less required to do so because the size of this capacitance has a relation to the amount of power that the device needs.
3. The Earth, seen as a spherical conductor has quite some capacitance. You'll need to add a significant amount of charge to raise its potential as you can imagine. If I suddenly add, say 1 Coulomb through my ground rod, you can imagine that, due to the immense size, it will take some time to evenly distribute this charge and that is where inductance comes in. Exactly the same thing happens as I described in point 1 with a coil, and you will find the Earth has a natural resonance frequency of about 11.77 Hz (which is NOT a Schumann resonance frequency. I made a video on that subject.).
   Instead of having this work against you you can let this work for you by adding an impulse every 84 ms (or there about), as if you are pushing a swing. That way no energy gets wasted on reactance and the only waste is from resistance (which is very small). You can, in this manner, build up a gigantic standing wave in the Earth and because it is so big, taking some energy out here and there does not affect it much.

Concerning the paper I linked earlier, you could watch some video's on vector algebra on youtube. If you are a little mathematically inclined you will not find it very hard to understand. With that you will be able to digest the paper little by little. Vector algebra really is a great tool to broaden & deepen your understanding of the relation between electricity and magnetism. Just take it one step at a time. ;)

[biophil]

Just take it one step at a time.

Yep, that's my approach. I'm actually pretty comfortable with math; just not able to put in the time to do the paper justice right now and I'd have to brush up significantly on my EM to be able to really get much from it.

Thanks for the replies! It's fun for me to imagine a world where Tesla had his way with more than just AC; must be particularly fun for you to go about actually building such a world. :)