Electricity and Common Urban Myths

[ShopShoe]

UNIcastings,

I had someone tell me about those moving-coil regulators. What he referred to had rocking beams: Thus, Rocking Beam Regulators. the power plant he visited had a whole basement full of them. He also explained how the series-wired streetlights kept working with burned-out bulbs.

BTW, the man that told me about this stuff was a ham radio enthusiast who held several commercial radio licenses (back when that was a mandatory and a big deal) who also built working replicas of early radio gear. When I moved on he was building a rotary spark gap transmitter.

--ShopShoe

 

[JorgensenSteam]

Shoe-

I vaguely remember something about street light systems, maybe the series systems had a self shorting device or something, in case the bulb burned out.
Electric street lights were a big deal when they came out, like something magical to have bright lights at night along the street.

The small assembly of coils that was in all phones until not too many years ago is an interesting circuit. I will dig out a copy of it.
It is a twist on what was done for multiplexing multiple telegraph signals on a single pair of wires.

If you have ever noticed, the wired phone lines only had two conductors per line, and yet voice was transmitted simultaneously from each end to the other at the same time over the same pair of wires, ie: both people could talk and listen at the same time on their respective phone sets.
You would think the two signals going in opposite directions would cancel, but using the coil circuitry, they did not.
Pretty clever what they did before the era of electronic circuits.

Pat J

 

[Ken I]

Dan,
Thanks very much for the Wiki link on frequencies - quite convoluted.

This thread has gone all over the place - but WTH this is the Break Room.

It is easy to dismiss safety concerns over many substances - but these substances are hazardous.
Unfortunately they are oft treated as absolutes, which they are not, limited exposure to most of them is generally not a problem.

Has anyone ever seen a table of risk profiles / subtances ?

For instance exposure to blue asbestos is cumulative and has long term consequences - avoid it like the plague.
Mercury is cumulative but very limited exposure I don't see as particularly dangerous.
Benzine is low risk - I saw an article which calculated the US benzine control regulations cost U$20 Billion per theoretical life saved.
I used to run a Chrome plant - Hexavalent Chromium - (the "Ellen Brockovitch" Chrome 6) - nasty stuff - but used with the correct care poses little risk. Used incorrectly its leathal.
Similarly plating and heat treatment with Cyanides - need I say more.

Doing anything is potentially dangerous - NASA astronauts belong to a drinking club called the "Turtles" - the motto - "if you don't stick your neck out, you'll never get anywhere".

I'll duck back into my shell now.

Ken

 

[ShopShoe]

UNIcastings,

Re: Streetlights -- What he told me was that there was a metal-dialetric-metal disc in the back of the bulb socket. The disc, called a "Dialectric Dime" would do nothing if the bulb was OK. Bulb filament broken and voltage accross dialectric in the dime would be high enough to burn out the insulator and short out, then the rest of the circuit would go back to normal. My understanding is then the regulator back at the power plant would compensate for the difference in the whole circuit.

Re: Telephones -- I never totally understood it, but the coils also allowed two phones on a two-party line to be rung independently of each other and for one party to call the other on the same circuit. I was once told the ringback test numbers to test any line (circa 1975): Dial xxxx-xx to test one side, then xxxx-xy to test the other.

General Comment: Greatest myth out there is that all we need to do is eliminate all hazardous materials and activities and that that can be done without any trade-off. The real job that the education system has is to get students (and everyone else) to understand that there are no absolutes in life and that decision-making must be informed decision-making and based on real science, real evidence, and understanding of the trade-offs involved.

BTW, I cringe whenever I hear how wonderful it is to use 100% sea salt in your food: after all the stuff that has been dumped into the sea I don't really feel good about sprinkling it everywhere. (This is meant to be non-inflamatory / ironic / humorous comment)

--ShopShoe

 

[Captain Jerry]

As a kid, I played with mercury, asbestos, and poured lead soldiers, and the common way to clinch a lead sinker on a fishing line was to bite it. I have suffered no apparent ill effects except that sometimes I do really dumb stuff. I wonder if it is related.

Jerry

 

[Don1966]

Changing the topic here it is getting kind of depressing I have beem exposed to a lot of this stuff myself. Time will tell if we have effects. Anyway I though Dan And Pat would enjoy one of my collectibles.
This is a Tesla High Frequency Coil I built back in 1993 when I had plenty of time on hand. My camera battery died on me I was wanting to put my Binary Clock, but I will add it later. The Coil will produce about 250,000 volts and yes the Floresent lite is lit. Tesla built Warden Cliffe tower on Long Island New York which was financed by J.P. Morgan it was to be a communication tower but also Tesla's test to transmit wireless power. Tesla had already tested his system in Colorada and if you look up Colorada experiment you can read about it. Anyway he placed two transformers 5 miles apart and transmitted all most absolute power with minimun loss wireless. He place a ground on each end and grid antenna. back to Warden Cliffe when J.P. Morgan found out that he could not put a meter on it he black balled Tesla and no one would help him so he poured all his resorces to salvage Warden cliffe but fail. This is when he sold alot of his pattens. There are Universitys that are researching his system and can transmitt 10,000 watts of power within a room.
Sadly because of J.P. Morgan we are at loss today. Ward Cliffe has been dismandled but the area still has a story to tell.
This Coil means nothing to most but to me it has a story behind it and that matters to me

Regards Don

 

[JorgensenSteam]

Don-

I have never had a coil, but have marveled at some of the ones I have seen.

The genius of Tesla seems to be in two parts, he understood electromagetism, but he also was creative enough to envision how it could be applied to practical problem solving, like power distribution, communication, etc. Tesla had incredible vision, and not just the type related to sight.

Jerry-

There is no doubt all the stuff I played with must have had some effect on health. We melted lead on a regular basis, and played with lead all the time. It is one of those things that I can't change, and so I don't worry about it. I do warn others, expecially young people, not to handle the hazardous stuff.


Pat J

 

[RonGinger]

I built a couple tesla coils in High School. The first used a tube from a TV set, and had an input power of about 20 watts. Then I borrowed a 6146 from the ham club and ran about 75 watts. That was kind of impressive, so I found a 211 triode and borrowed the power supply form the ham club and ran 1.5kw. I tuned it to 1 mhz, which of course is in the middle of the broadcast band. My secondary coil was about 5 feet tall.

I could carry a 4 ft florescent tube anywhere in the house and light up as much of it as my hands spread. It would vaporize a wad of steel wool thrown at it.

I had a lot of trouble keeping it from arcing over between the primary and secondary coils. Even a glass bottle with the bottom cutout wouldn't hold it.

I ran it for our annual class open house, but then had to dismantle it. I still have the 211 tube right here on my desk. It has a graphite anode about 2 inch tall, would light up the room when running.

I went to a fabulous high school- Cass Tech in Detroit. What I learned there in my 3 years has been of more use to me that all my college work. We had house wiring, single phase motors, three phase motors, radio, TV and industrial electronics. It was a tough school- you had to pass an entrance exam, then keep up your grades- my freshman electrical class had nearly 500, about 50 of us made it to graduation. The rest went back to their local high school.

 

[Tin Falcon]

It seems like this thread is already wandering. so will wander along. I was in a general High school and mostly took general classes. I took a full schedule IMHO study halls were a wast of time. So I took whatever extra classes that looked interesting including, photography and graphic arts. The xtra classes landed me my first real job. I made silk screens for 6 1/2 years ran an art department for about 1 1/2 years of it.
Back to the subject at hand , In high school my main interest was electronics . Our school used the Navy basic electronics program. And I was in the science club. the leader of the science club built a tesla coil . it would put out 1,000,0000 volts stepped up from the standard 120 from the wall. It started with a transformer from a neon light. then it was hooded to a primary could about the size of large coffee can about 6" diameter and 8" high the secondary coil was IIRC wrapped around a gift paper roll 1 11/2 diameter 3 ft long . it was hoked to a LARGE capacitor . the cap was a home made deal a wooden box two foot by by three foot and 5 inches deep it had layers of plate glass and aluminium foil and filled with motor oil. it was tuned with a small spark gap.
it would jump a spark a foot through dry air.
Tin

 

[Don1966]

Pat this is my Binary Clock. What is unique about this clock is that it tells time in the Binary Weighing System. Which is 1,2,4,8 from the bottom LEDS up toward the top LED's. The Red LEDs are the ones that tell time, you simply add the red LEDs lit in the same column and you get the time. Looking at the large Photo the time is 1:12:34. This clock sits on my desk and makes a good conversation piece. The other thing that makes it unique is this is the same as our computer system which is converted to Hexidecimal for the assembly language source code and compiled to a more user friendly code like windows source code.
It was built from scratch, I layed out the traces, made a template and etched the circuit.. This clock was featured in Popular Electronic magazine in 1993.

Don

 

[Foozer]

maybe I am slow, or so the bride says.
Gets me though as to why a conductor passed through a magnetic field causes the electron to move in the first place.

Robert

 

[Don1966]

Tin that sounded very interesting. A lot of these were built with home made parts. The capacitor and the inductor both home made the two form a resonance circuit, this is were you get the high frequency from. The spark gap is used to trigger the primary coil resonance circuit and the high voltage is produced by the many turn of the secondary inductor. One unique thing about the secondary inductor, looking at mind, most of the tower coil is above the primary coil which is the black wire. The influence of the primary is felt the whole length of the tower coil, yet it has only one quarter of it around the primary.

maybe I am slow, or so the bride says.
Gets me though as to why a conductor passed through a magnetic field causes the electron to move in the first place.

Robert

Robert a lot of people have wondered that for decades. Electricity is a unknown phenomenon. We know how to use it, but we don't know what it is. According to Tesla it is in the Ether and all around us, but he also said he did not know where it came from, yet we have learned to harness but a fraction of it. Tesla knew more about it as did Ed Leedskalnin. Ed could actually see the the magnetic field surrounding the earth, people have said that he could see a distortion in it and this is we're he built the Coral Castle in Flordia by him self. One thing I did not mention about Ed he only weighed 75 pounds, think about that.


Regards Don

 

[Foozer]

"Robert a lot of people have wondered that for decades."

What has always bugged me, where the energy comes from to move the electron.
Have yet to find any info to suggest the magnet itself looses force, or the electron supply is diminished. Seems to be a neutral effect to both parties. Being neutral would think the effect sould be neutral, no movement.
Perhaps Tesla is right, the Ether, the same force causing expansion and acceleration of that expansion to the universe.
Would indeed be a source of energy to identify and harness the "Ether."

Guess we wait until another Tesla is born for that answer to arrive

Robert

 

[JorgensenSteam]

The only high voltage coil I ever had was a gag book that was rigged to give you a terrific shock when you opened it. I bought it out of the back of a comic book, where you could buy all sorts of gag stuff.

I did pretty good with the book shocking people and fellow 6th grade students, but then I made the mistake of letting the teacher open it (seemed like a good idea at the time). She shrieked and threw the thing across the room. Needless to say, my book got confiscated. Title on the book had a subtitle something like "Its a real shocker!".

We had several crystal radio sets, with antenna strung all throught the attic.

And a telegraph key practice set, which I never mastered, but my brother did.

You could make all sorts of electrical gadgets using kits from Radio Shack, and they all had discrete components, so you could get a better feel for what was happening then the modern "all-in-one" microchip.

My wife has some binary number jokes. I will ask here what they are.
I was always a bit confused by binary and the other non-base 10 systems. Gosh, I had enough trouble with the base 10 system.
I do remember being subjected to assembly code in school, and how tedious that was to do the shift registers and overflows, etc. We had one of the newer computers in one lab, which was a PDP11, and it had 12" floppy disks. Very modern for its time, but it ran assembly code. It had controlled outputs, etc.

We also had several analog computers in one lab, now that is an interesting computer, but very simple, just resistors, capacitors, and inductors, with knob control of the values for each.

Electronics has always confused me to a great extent, so I guess that is why I became a power distribution engineer, to avoid electronics. They keep creeping in on me though, such as with the VFD's, etc.

I have a Fortran compiler, and I still love that language. It took us to the moon (Fortran).

Yes this thread is meandering like a stream through the forest, but I am towards the end of a big project, and don't have the time to work on engines, so just a quick blog during break times, to relax and do something other than work.

I hope to get back into the modeling/casting thing in a few weeks, but hey, this thread is pretty interesting too.

I think I understand a little about physics, and if I understand correctly, matter is just very dense energy. If you split an atom, you can release a great deal of that energy. I assume the energy gets condensed into matter in the black holes.

As far as magnetic fields, light is an electromagnetic field, with its electrical and magnetic fields at 90 degrees. Why a conductor passing through a magnetic field causes the electrons to move in the wire, I don't understand.
And magnets further confuse me because nothing is moving with them, and yet they can push very hard on objects, but without touching them. Go figure. I do know the poles line up in all the material of a magnet, but that really does not explain it either.

Pat J

 

[Don1966]

Yes these invisible lines of force as we call them can be reproduced through magnetism. But yet what are they that is still unknown. Why they have the ability to cause electrons to move. Now here is another area that you can look at. How do we know it moves electrons? It could be the Ether itself that moves. All the books that have been written on the subject, is for us to understand how to use it and that is all. it is still a mystery.

Don

 

[JorgensenSteam]

Since I have never been able to figure out the exact mechanism of how magnetism acts on electrons, etc., or even if there really are electrons, but instead, I just look at power flow, since it is real and can be measured.

Not sure exactly why the power flows, but it does flow.

My great grandmother was told not to touch a power line that had fallen in the street, and she said "it is obvious that there is nothing in that little wire that could hurt me".
Once she regained consciousness (she was not killed luckily), she said "now I believe there is something powerful in that little wire".

 

[Don1966]

Pat think about this the universe is a body, just like our body. Earth itself is an electron spinning in its own orbit in that body. This is how very limited man is as to how much he knows. Every text that his be written is subject to change within the next decade on the subject of physics. Our text have not been rewritten since Einstein. And lord knows we need another. There is only one man that understood his theory of relativity and he wrote a book about it. His name was Hendricks Antoon Lorentz. There are a lot of books on magnetism, but look up Ed Leedskalnin and read his theory about magnetism. There are no electrons in his papers every thing is north and south poles no atoms. Yet this little 75 pound man built a monument of coral for all the world to see by him self. Yet he said he knew how the pyramids were built.

Don

 

[Troutsqueezer]

Pat think about this the universe is a body, just like our body. Earth itself is an electron spinning in its own orbit in that body.
Don

Sorry Don, that's another myth.

The bottom line is that the old picture of the electron spinning around in an orbit (like a tiny solar system) is simply not right. The electrons are allowed to exist at very precise energies, but their position is spread out, described by a "wave of probability." In fact, it has been shown that the 1s and 2s electrons spend around 50% of their time sailing right through the nucleus.

 

[Don1966]

You are correct Trout read it again it was just a example of how little man knows. One thing I never did research is how many small particles they have broken the Atom down to, I know there are many. In the 60's it was Electron, proton and neutrons. And the atom was the smallest particle of any substance this is no longer true. At least they made some progress. I also learn in the 60's about energy transfer we had two ways of learning one was conventional flow and the other energy transfer. Engery transfer was one atom transferring energy to an from another atom. I guess you know which method was choosen. Oh! yes and hole flow with semiconductors. I really don't want to get that far into physics because I am limited in that respect.

Don

 

[RollaJohn]

Right!!! Now that opens a new can of worms.
Electrons and holes flowing in a semiconductor was presented in class with the analogy of a line of marbles. The marbles represented the electrons. When the marble on the end of the string moved it leaves a hole Then the next marble advances into the hole and the hole has moved two spaces down the line. This keeps repeating ... the marbles going one direction and the holes in the other until all the marbles have progressed and the hole that started at one end is now at the other.

This was easy to visualize and made sense. THEN ... the kicker was mentioned. The holes and electrons do not flow at the same rate, one is faster than the other! I decided not to worry about this and to treat it as a black box. Just accept it, know it happens, and pay attention to the results.