What Is Electricity? by Stephen Smith

[Sparky]

http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/11 ... tricity-2/

Thank you! But what is electric energy, which is the stuff that does the work?

Get a few "charges" lined up, and Shazam! The "real" electricity (12vdc) rips along the 00 guage cable, and fries the end of my screwdriver off! ...

It's easy to say that the energy travels outside the cable and has certain properties which have been codified for a 100 years. But when we get through with all of the equations and definitions of explanations, we still have the mystery, where does that energy come from? It's not from the charges, though they are needed to initiate the energy transfer. Is it the inherent energy within the electron? Or do they provide a portal for energy to come through? And does the portal manifest as a magnetic field?

Is this question beyond our current understanding?

[Genius Gone Insane]

I love this article.

I would take it a step further and ask if science needs to reconsider asking why do positive and negative charges attract? Maybe it is time to revisit that forbidden "why" question.

[Steve Smith]

What makes magnetism attract? What is charge? What is electromagnetism?

None of those questions can be answered. As I stated in my article, we must resort to metaphors in order to discuss those ideas, but we'll never get to the bottom of that lexical well. Can we define "anger" except by using synonyms? If we say, "Anger is a feeling," then the word "feeling" must be defined. Eventually, there's no where to go.

I go by what I read many years ago from Albert Camus (someone else on this site quoted him a couple years ago, although I can't remember who it was):

At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multi-colored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know.

Discussions are fun. Since there aren't any answers, I prefer Feyerabend's dictum:

No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempts to find the principles implicit in familiar observational notions.

and..

The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.

SS

[Sparky]

Steven Smith, thank you for your efforts and for reminding me that people far smarter and knowledgeable than I have areas or points that are not understandable.

I don't know what it is, but I keep one hand in my pocket, while standing on a rubber mat, as I work on a live circuit. ....

[Ozelo]

Sorry but, Isn't possible to say that a "positive" charge behave "positively" because it is not negative, consequently, a "negative" charge behave "negatively" because it is not positive?

Let's say, define one in terms of another, so could we be able to address the problem to what a "electric displacement in vacuum" means. In a way that, independently if they "behave" like a stream of moving protons (or moving electrons) for a "relation within" the vacuum, but instead, why they move at all.

I mean some kind of this question: Are there some kind of permanent and perpetual energy flow from which the cosmic electric circuits do their works (from which something push or pull the electricity like, well, that's how matter is transformed through the periodic table, therefore, matter exist to provide the current flow and, consequently, provide the equilibrium to the system as it is. Instead of canceling or annihilating as we thought of what happens to such symmetric opposing forces.)?

In other words, the universe works without switching or replacing its batteries. Otherwise, could it be that the sum of all forces of any nature are "not really" always zero in all systems of reference?

Sorry, I guess I need to better organize some ideas.

[Sparky]

[quote]Sorry, I guess I need to better organize some ideas.[quote]

well, if you get it figured out....let me know...I don't know where it comes from..