From: Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1998 09:07:36 +0800
To: cypherpunks@EINSTEIN.ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: Re: Grounding (fwd)
Message-ID: <199811070039.SAA00913@einstein.ssz.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Forwarded message:

> Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 09:26:05 -0800
> From: Michael Motyka <mmotyka@lsil.com>
> Subject: Re: Grounding (fwd) 

> Yeah I've got my old copy of Jackson. MTW too, for all the good it did
> me. Maxwell's equations can be used to form a wave equation too. I only
> bring up the Schroedinger equation because the solutions to simple
> particle-in-a-box examples are easy to generate and easy to visualize.

The problem is we're not discussing a particle in a box. We're discussing
the statistical mechanical behaviour of a group of particles. Apples and
oranges. One, you're scale of distance between the two is off by orders of
magnitude. Secondly, you're considering an electron carrying a photon as a
single wavicle, it ain't. It's a superposition of several wavicles (3 quarks
and a lepton to be exact under the standard model). Thirdly, you're trying
to model a group of particles as a single instance of Schroedengers Wave
equation, a big no no. Fourthly, you're failing to take into account the
interactions between the particles and those consequences because of mass
charge, which after all is the engine that drives this model.

In reference to your particle-in-a-box model, the point you seem to miss is
that the scale of the box is on the order of a few Planck distances. That
behaviour is grossly different than a ball 10 in. in diameter filled with a
gas of electrons (and potentialy protons if it's not a vacuum) all carrying
short-wavelength photons around.

> DC, Yes. AC, things are happening.

Where did the AC come from? We're talking about a spark gap that is only
going to emit electrons *and* is run by a battery (it's your baby). Where
the hell do I buy an AC battery pray tell?

Where? Under your example there is no mass charge flow because ground is
irrelevant. So we're left with only the gas like behaviours. Now it's
clear that the individual particle paths are going to be modelled via a
drunkards walk. So, where does this coherent flow come from?

If there is a flow it implies, because of the behaviour of like/dislike
charges, that there is a difference in charge.

> To solve the diffeq's for an EM wave incident on a conducting surface
> you have to make the solutions !inside! the conductor match the
> solutions outside the conductor. Only if the conductor is *perfect* does
> your assumption of nothing going on inside the conductor make sense.

What the hell are you talking about?....

Here's what we're discussing:

A generator emits electrons which carry a negative charge.

These electrons each also carry a photon of some quantity.

Like charges repel.

When a photon strikes an atom it will be absorbed if it's wavelength matches
one of the Bohr radii. This may cause one or more secondary photons to be
emitted as a result.

The assumption was the spark gap is in the center of the ball.

Because the spark gaps emission of electrons is random the resultant cloud
of particles can be modelled as a gas that is expanding from a point source.

The expansion is driven by the repelling effect of the charges.

This causes the the particles at time tau to, on average - remember we're
talking statistical mechanics here, expand at an equal rate, in effect
forming a bubble of particles coherent with tau. That rate is usualy related
to k * sqrt ( s ).

As the charges expand some will emit photons. Some of the atoms in the shell
will emit photons. Some of each will absorb photons.

At some point (tau + delta) the charge impacts the shell. This will in
effect increase the charge of the shell by 1 -e.

Now, by Gauss's Law, this charge in the gas will induce an opposite charge
on the inside surface of the globe.

Unlike charges attract. Therefore the gas of electrons are attracted to the
inside surface. Now since the globe is neutral it must follow by
conservation of charge that there is a negative charge equal to the charge
held in the gas on the *OUTSIDE* of the ball.

This is in addition to the charge that steadily builds up in the shell as
the electrons accrete over time. This can be modelled with an integral of
the flow rate of the current in the battery (it after all is Coulombs/s).
It's not too hard (k * I). (I'm not going to go into what happens as the
charge on the shell builds up as we're discussing here the applicability of
wave equations as a reliable model).

So what do you get? A hell of a charge that will go bang at some point when
some insulation give way.

See:

Physics
J. Orear
ISBN 0-02-389460-1
pp. 304
"Electrical Induction"

He uses your exact model except for the tether. It's a classic in Freshman
Physics and science museums.

> BTW - the skin depth for Cu at 100MHz is about 0.00026". The skin depth
> is proportional to f^(-0.5).

So what if the electron gives it's photon up to another which causes it to
bounce around through the Cu lattice till it gets to the other side knocking
an electron free (conservation of momentum) or emitting a free photon (which
is what we're *REALLY* talking about reducing with TEMPEST - you could think
of it as cooling the laptop at rf frequencies if you like, you could model
it with a spin-glass based cellular automaton). It's called charge migration
and there are also effects at high voltage which is called charge tunneling.
If you examine the literature of Japanese hi-v researchers they have become
adept at causing ball lightening to tunnel through insulators. It's pretty
interesting. There are also quite a few cases where the inducement fails and
the result is a broken ceramic plate because of the heating effects.

[rest deleted]


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