I am about to say something perposterous.
I say that electricity in fact flows in open circuit and it does not need a return, close path.
I say that all a return path does is that it merely concertrates the flow, channels it so to speak.
Where did this idea come from and popped in my head? From the statement below.

If it was true that it needed a return or close path, a battery will never so called discharge. It will never de-energize.
Energy is moving in and out of the environment. It is everywhere already.
When we so called harness energy, all we are doing is concentrating it. Like gathering a bunch of money from everywhere and put it in a peggy bank.

I say you can turn a light bulb on by merely supplying it with voltage, say you connect one end of the supply to the bulb and the other end of the supply to some large insulated metal structure ( like your car). And the other end of the light bulb to say another car. And your light should turn on.
Based on my perposterous statement that is.

Title: Understanding Basic Electronics, 1st Ed.
Publisher: The American Radio Relay League
ISBN: 0-87259-398-3

Keep thinking about it as you are, but be open to tweak your understanding. After you've read what's in the above book regarding Ohm's and Watt's Laws, then look at Kirchhoff, and Thevenin. You're closer to a breakthrough in understanding, than you think. And it makes electronics simple, once you do.

 

Things like levers and pulleys were also used by ancient humans (not to mention a whole host of other amazing technologies that they were able to "muster and master" to one degree or another

Sounds good...but the wheel was not even invented yet! Bye-bye pulleys.

 

Title: Understanding Basic Electronics, 1st Ed.
Publisher: The American Radio Relay League
ISBN: 0-87259-398-3

Keep thinking about it as you are, but be open to tweak your understanding. After you've read what's in the above book regarding Ohm's and Watt's Laws, then look at Kirchhoff, and Thevenin. You're closer to a breakthrough in understanding, than you think. And it makes electronics simple, once you do.

============================
Mathmaticians do everything they can to stay away from dividing by 0.
I=E/R
R=E/I
R and I can not be allowed to be 0 or the whole formula falls apart
Then what will happen to P= I x E

Captain, resist me, you must resist me otherwise I will have no power. I need you as my enemy.
" I need my pain", Capt. Kirk

 

============================
Mathmaticians do everything they can to stay away from dividing by 0.
I=E/R
R=E/I
R and I can not be allowed to be 0 or the whole formula falls apart
Then what will happen to P= I x E

Captain, resist me, you must resist me otherwise I will have no power. I need you as my enemy.
" I need my pain", Capt. Kirk

Mathematicians worry about such trivialities, practical engineers do not. We say it's zero and move on.

 

I hooked up ten 9 volt batteries. One end of it to a red typical LED and the other end of it the batteries to the ground of the household powe line.
The other end of the LEDto a large heavy sheet metal.

That is called capacitive coupling to your house power. Enough to allow a small current to flow through the LED. There is a return path, it is the earth ground! Take that away and you have nothing. The batteries can likely be removed with no change in the effect.

Bob

 

That is called capacitive coupling to your house power. Enough to allow a small current to flow through the LED. There is a return path, it is the earth ground! Take that away and you have nothing. The batteries can likely be removed with no change in the effect.

Bob

===============================
Nope. You didn't read all my comments.
It is clear from that one statement the obvious thing. Building ground wire on the one hand
A larget sheet metal standing on the ground. The circuit was complete.
It took all those batteries to push current through the impedence of the ground and complete circuit. The reason the LED was faint was because it was in its last breath. In fact in only takes two 9V batteries to do the job.

 

I don't care how the ancients moved stuff.
But I can point out again that just because one does not see something, not understand how it works does not mean that it does not exist or happen.
For completion of a current path, capacitance counts. And capacitance is very difficult to see, and for a lot of them , just as hard to visualize.
For a graphic demonstration of conductivity just consider lightning. Charge is built up by the weather physically moving conductive stuff up and down, and the potential between the slighty conductive layer in the sky and the more conductive ground of earth builds up. But nothing happens until suddenly the insulation breaks down and a conductor forms, composed of ionized air. Then all of that charge flows through the column of ionized air and flows into the ground. That is one sort of circuit allowing current to flow. It seems that ionized air, actually, the atoms of the various gasses, is a good conductor of electricity. But only after it forms.

 

potential between the slighty conductive layer in the sky and the more conductive ground of earth builds up

You ever heard of lightning sprites
They go vertical away from the Earth above thunderstorms.

But I can point out again that just because one does not see something, not understand how it works does not mean that it does not exist or happen

Point well taken!

 

I have heard of making electric current to take place without wires whatsoever. No circuits at all between the source on one hand and the recipient clear across town. No circuits between the two.
I can turn that LED without even touching anything. No battery, no ground, no sheet metal, no open circuit, no closed circuit, none of that. For reals as my gangsta brother would ask? And I would answer; "For reals bro".
As in wireless transmission and it is everywhere. Oh nooooooo. After all it is the energy that makes it all happen in the first place.

 

Dismissing one's well-educated advice due to what are perceived to be more important, ignoring contrary information.
People display bias beliefs when they select information that supports their views.
Excluding myself. the advice given to you should be taken to heart. It's one thing to keep an open mind but beware...
Your brains may fall out.
What you just said was nonsense. I should know cuz I'm good at that!
Use all this advice to your advantage and carry on!

 

Of course there are always "cheap tricks", also known as illusions, and some of them are impressive. And to those who believe in magic, that is what they look like. But the fact is that just becausewe do not see something, nor understand it, does not mean that it does not exist, or that it is magic. We see illusions all the time in YouTube, and they are presented as reality. So if you can pull off some trick and light an LED, that is fine, but it only proves that you can do a trick. And just because the current path is not clearly seen does not mean it does not exist.

 

For there to be a flow of charge there must be a path of some kind. The fact that we can't see it or even understand it does not disprove it's existence. Charge can accumulate without flowing, which is why a balloon rubbed on wool will then cling to something because of charge attraction. But as that charge flows onto passing air the localized charge is reduced and the balloon eventually falls. So there does wind up being a path that is neither visible nor obvious.

 

Dismissing one's well-educated advice due to what are perceived to be more important, ignoring contrary information.
People display bias beliefs when they select information that supports their views.
Excluding myself. the advice given to you should be taken to heart. It's one thing to keep an open mind but beware...
Your brains may fall out.
What you just said was nonsense. I should know cuz I'm good at that!
Use all this advice to your advantage and carry on!

That pretty much covers it.

Ron

 

Could we (those who develop or trust the scientific consensus) be wrong about electric current?

Of course we could be, but if so we will be wrong in the way Newton was wrong about gravity—he wasn't, he just didn't have the complete picture. Einstein extended Newton, he didn't debunk him.

In a similar way, if we are wrong about electrical current it will be because the model is incomplete and will be extended, it will not be proven incorrect or incapable of being used to predict the behavior (or lack thereof) of power sources, loads, and circuits.

 

In addition, many years of observation and experience show good agreement with the more commonly accepted theory.

 

Sometimes we can learn quite a bit from history and then again sometimes not.

Ron

 

Once again, consider that electrical charge flows, including that portion known as radio waves. Actually the mechanism is well understood by aome folks, and accepted as usable and predictable by many. It happens that radio waves are very difficult to see, but fairly simple to detect. They are also rather simple to block, requiring only a much better conductor than air to block their travel. So we can verify that "not all conductors are equal," and we can show that "some are much less equal."

 

Be advised, I'm not going to be drawn into an argument. I'm simply going to state my point of view and offer some basic explanations and then be done with this.

If it was true that it needed a return or close path, a battery will never so called discharge. It will never de-energize.

Batteries have internal resistance that limits their ability to deliver their current. However, there is no such thing as a perfect battery. Imperfections inside the battery will discharge it over time. Some batteries may have a shelf life of a few years, others may last for decades or longer. I'm certainly no battery expert, but batteries do self discharge.

I say that electricity in fact flows in open circuit and it does not need a return, close path.

Conventionally speaking, current needs a return path to flow. I said "Conventionally". You can not get any practical current from a one sided half circuit.

HOWEVER, yes, electricity CAN flow in a one sided half circuit. Airplanes do it all the time. Next time you fly on a commercial flight notice the trailing edges of the wings have probes that seem to extend to nowhere. Those are static discharge probes. As airplanes fly through the air static charges build up on their surfaces. Those tiny discharge probes conduct the static electricity to their sharp pointed tips where the electrons are stripped away by the passing air stream. So in that sense current is flowing from the airplane to the air.

Your experiment doesn't seem to support any real hypothesis. The fact that the LED's did glow could simply be the result of static discharge. The fact that they burned out could simply be the result of ESD (Electro Static Discharge), which in the electronics industry is a huge problem that millions if not billions of dollars have been spent to mitigate its damaging effects. I can place a static sensitive chip on a grounded work station and then after walking across the room, put my hand OVER, not touching the chip but "Over" the chip and blow it out without making contact. How? Why? Because the static field stored by my body can easily reach over 50,000 volts static. The static field, that is to say the difference in voltage potential is enough to move static from my airborne hand to the grounded work surface. Finding a shorter pathway through the chip it can be damaged or even completely rendered useless.

Ever walk across the carpet and grab a door knob and get that annoying if not painful snap of static discharge? That's because you're at a much higher voltage potential than the doorknob. The moment you make contact with the knob you equalize your charge and you get that annoying shock. Extremely high voltage but potentially almost no current. The spark can start a fire in a gas rich environment provided the air to fuel ratio is correct, but it's not enough energy to burn your flesh just from the discharge of the spark as you come ever closer to the knob. If you were able to make full contact with the doorknob before static started to move (becoming NOT static at that point) you would not feel the shock at all.

Perhaps your experiments were harnessing static energy between one voltage potential (the battery) and the other, the sheet metal. I'd propose that it may be possible to harvest static charge by using lots of extremely large and isolated sheet metal panels and ground. But the problem with that is you have no idea what polarity you might achieve. As a power source you'll virtually never get enough POWER (not voltage or current) to power anything other than to burn out electronic devices such as your LED's.