Are we going about things wrong perhaps?

Thread Starter

Rolland B. Heiss

Joined Feb 4, 2015
236
I read this here in relation to Ohm's law just a bit ago in the textbook section:

"Free electrons tend to move through conductors with some degree of friction, or opposition to motion. This opposition to motion is more properly called resistance. The amount of current in a circuit depends on the amount of voltage available to motivate the electrons, and also the amount of resistance in the circuit to oppose electron flow. Just like voltage, resistance is a quantity relative between two points. For this reason, the quantities of voltage and resistance are often stated as being "between" or "across" two points in a circuit."

Now I'm trying to understand all of this so guess what I did? I used personification in an attempt to understand as I imagined myself to be a 'free' electron. Being an America it was easy for me to understand freedom so here I am moving around in an atom around a nucleus (or America if you will) with the freedoms given and am content and am also kinetic by the way meaning I produce energy and move. So somebody named voltage comes along with little more than potential to move me where I do not wish to go outside of my chosen comfort zone. Thus I of course resist! Yet, this voltage person wishes to force me against my will to move where I do not wish to go, therefore my resistance comes into play BIG TIME! But what if voltage decided to make friends with me and I agreed to go wherever voltage went because I liked him or her and was willing to follow? Wherein would the resistance lie then? I would not, in that instance, resist at all! So, what are we missing here? There is a way to live together and mutually benefit which (as it seems to me) has yet to be discovered and if the outside world apart from electronics is any indication we can't even accomplish the simple feat of living together and yet we have constitutions and laws out here considered axioms and even more laws and studies and journals I always hear about in the electronic world which may be erroneous because there was a time when the axiom stated that the world was flat. It has since, of course, been proven faulty but you might have been burned at the stake if you boldly proclaimed otherwise. Maybe I don't know what the heck I'm talking about but when I personify things it helps me understand that we don't really know much at all as a race despite the great strides we've made throughout history and yet point at textbooks as if they were some sort of undisputed factual brick walls through which one cannot breach. I have a problem with that line of thinking and I know there has to be more than what we have or claim to know now. Am I the only one who thinks and feels and questions like this?
 
Last edited:

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,087
If you lived in Kansas and only stayed on a small farm saying the world was flat was a good approximation of reality 'for you'. Personal theories are great if they work for you but don't expect others that can see over the horizon to agree.
 

Thread Starter

Rolland B. Heiss

Joined Feb 4, 2015
236
If you lived in Kansas and only stayed on a small farm saying the world was flat was a good approximation of reality 'for you'. Personal theories are great if they work for you but don't expect others that can see over the horizon to agree.
I'm just saying man that things we thought impossible just a hundred years ago are now reality and things we think impossible now will be in existence 100 years from now if we don't blow ourselves up between now and then. We don't know it all and I'm sure you know a hell of a lot more than I do given the information of our times but there's got to be more that hasn't been figured out. By the way, whatever happened to the Nitinol engine discovery in the 70's and why isn't it being used on a large scale today?
 
Last edited:

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,087
I'm just saying man that things we thought impossible just a hundred years ago are now reality and things we think impossible now will be in existence 100 years from now if we don't blow ourselves up between now and then. We don't know it all and I'm sure you know a hell of a lot more than I do given the information of our times but there's got to be more that hasn't been figured out.
Yes there is, but and this is a big one, just like how the discovery of the earth not being flat didn't make the farmers calculations of crops completely wrong using flat earth equations, new discoveries won't completely invalidate what we know now at the energies and scale of matter we currently control. Our current scientific knowledge of what's possible is limited by what's doable engineering wise. My WAG is that we've passed the human WW3 blowup the planet stage and are moving to a dangerous time of AI combined with nano-technology that could be manipulated into something worse than a bomb in 20+ years.

I think we've done pretty well for a type 13 planet.
 
Last edited:

bwilliams60

Joined Nov 18, 2012
1,442
As for your theory of moving along with "voltage" and offering up no resistance, your theory is short sighted. As with anything in this world, there will always be some sort of resistance. It always takes some effort to get something moving and after it is moving, there is resistance between components such as rolling resistance. That will never be removed. I'm not sure about your life question as I try not to think that deep as it hurts my head and makes me sad. I could burn up a lot of energy trying to sort through it and there is nothing I can do to change it. A lot of greater people have tried and succeeded to some extent, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. Good luck to you and I hope you can find a way to reduce the resistance you find in life.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
So ... what's your point.

The premise that we think that we know everything and that we point to textbooks as repositories of absolute and inviolate fact is a false one. Of course we don't know everything. Of course we will discover new things. Of course some of the things that we believe are true now will turn out to be at least somewhat different. We are constantly challenging our understanding of the natural laws and revising that understanding as needed.

So ... what's your point?

As for the Nitinol engine (such as the Bank Engine which is probably what you are referring to), it remains a curiosity because no one has figured out a way to make a scalable, practical, useful implementation. There is nothing preventing you or anyone else from taking a shot or ten at it.
 

Thread Starter

Rolland B. Heiss

Joined Feb 4, 2015
236
So ... what's your point.

The premise that we think that we know everything and that we point to textbooks as repositories of absolute and inviolate fact is a false one. Of course we don't know everything. Of course we will discover new things. Of course some of the things that we believe are true now will turn out to be at least somewhat different. We are constantly challenging our understanding of the natural laws and revising that understanding as needed.

So ... what's your point?

As for the Nitinol engine (such as the Bank Engine which is probably what you are referring to), it remains a curiosity because no one has figured out a way to make a scalable, practical, useful implementation. There is nothing preventing you or anyone else from taking a shot or ten at it.
You have made my point without understanding how you did. Thanks.
 

Thread Starter

Rolland B. Heiss

Joined Feb 4, 2015
236
As for your theory of moving along with "voltage" and offering up no resistance, your theory is short sighted. As with anything in this world, there will always be some sort of resistance. It always takes some effort to get something moving and after it is moving, there is resistance between components such as rolling resistance. That will never be removed. I'm not sure about your life question as I try not to think that deep as it hurts my head and makes me sad. I could burn up a lot of energy trying to sort through it and there is nothing I can do to change it. A lot of greater people have tried and succeeded to some extent, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. Good luck to you and I hope you can find a way to reduce the resistance you find in life.
Not always in relation to resistance. Consider this:

 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,087
I read this here in relation to Ohm's law just a bit ago in the textbook section:

"Free electrons tend to move through conductors with some degree of friction, or opposition to motion. This opposition to motion is more properly called resistance. The amount of current in a circuit depends on the amount of voltage available to motivate the electrons, and also the amount of resistance in the circuit to oppose electron flow. Just like voltage, resistance is a quantity relative between two points. For this reason, the quantities of voltage and resistance are often stated as being "between" or "across" two points in a circuit."

Now I'm trying to understand all of this so guess what I did? I used personification in an attempt to understand as I imagined myself to be a 'free' electron. Being an America it was easy for me to understand freedom so here I am moving around in an atom around a nucleus (or America if you will) with the freedoms given and am content and am also kinetic by the way meaning I produce energy and move. So somebody named voltage comes along with little more than potential to move me where I do not wish to go outside of my chosen comfort zone. Thus I of course resist! Yet, this voltage person wishes to force me against my will to move where I do not wish to go, therefore my resistance comes into play BIG TIME! But what if voltage decided to make friends with me and I agreed to go wherever voltage went because I liked him or her and was willing to follow? Wherein would the resistance lie then? I would not, in that instance, resist at all! So, what are we missing here? There is a way to live together and mutually benefit which (as it seems to me) has yet to be discovered and if the outside world apart from electronics is any indication we can't even accomplish the simple feat of living together and yet we have constitutions and laws out here considered axioms and even more laws and studies and journals I always hear about in the electronic world which may be erroneous because there was a time when the axiom stated that the world was flat. It has since, of course, been proven faulty but you might have been burned at the stake if you boldly proclaimed otherwise. Maybe I don't know what the heck I'm talking about but when I personify things it helps me understand that we don't really know much at all as a race despite the great strides we've made throughout history and yet point at textbooks as if they were some sort of undisputed factual brick walls through which one cannot breach. I have a problem with that line of thinking and I know there has to be more than what we have or claim to know now. Am I the only one who thinks and feels and questions like this?

While I sincerely hold interdisciplinary parallelism in highest esteem -- please be advised that, as with all manner of analogy, it must be carefully applied is it to render constructive perspective...

First of all, while electrical resistance is not friction, it is often useful to regard it as analogous to same for pedagogical purposes...
Similarly EMF (Voltage, if you must) may, within the confines outlined above, be regarded as analogous to kinetic force (whether Linear [Thrust] or Angular [Torque])

FWIW the likelihood that your political analogy is offered 'tongue-in-cheek' is not lost on me ;) --- Even so, I feel earnest questions deserve literal replies :)

Best regards
HP:D
 
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