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Twists, you see, are conserved. :D

No, actually, they haven't. The paper you're talking about shows photons exist; that's all that was ever directly detected or measured.

ETA: And of course there's something there that actually exists: the twists in the lattices. But it's not a particle.

EATA: Oh, and to move it one step farther back: I have confused phonons with polaritons; phonons are the twists. Polaritons are an abstract representation of the combination of a phonon and a photon as a single "particle." That particle doesn't actually exist in the way we ordinarily think of things existing; it's a calculational artifact of representing twists in a crystal lattice as particles.

That such an entity can be used to represent a real physical system, and that valid and correct predictions of the behavior of that system can be made using it, is not proof of its existence.

Last edited Thu, 31 Mar 2011, 10:22pm by Schneibster

PeterP, you claimed my analogy was wrong. You never said how. Now you're trying to wiggle out of it with rhetoric. Sorry, I won't bother reading you any more.

Again, charge is a fundamental quantity. Good luck with that. See ya.

I am seriously considering solarizing this year. Even if I don't it won't be long. With the subsidies, I can afford a system that should have me carbon-neutral.

DAP wrote:

Schneibster wrote:

DAP wrote:

My first question is a basic one and has to do with charging a capacitor.

For example, the energy storage devices are charged to 3500 V.

Does this necessarily imply that the voltage differential between the two electrodes equals 3500 V or could this differential be less if there are charged entities associated with the dielectric composition between the electrodes?

It necessarily implies that the voltage differential between the two electrodes, actually technically between an electrode and the case, equals 3500V. A voltage difference is the same no matter the distance. That's because it's energy per charge and therefore doesn't obey the inverse square law. It's good to think of voltage as "pressure" if you use the waterworks analogy to understand electricity.

I don't know what "there are charged entities associated with the dielectric composition between the electrodes" means, nor do I see how such entities could do anything but move under the influence of the E field, nor how any influence they might have wouldn't already be accounted for in the already-measured voltage. I can see how different compositions with different numbers of such entities might change the voltage. That's pretty much what a capacitor does; it uses the self-interaction of the E field to store energy (actually, technically, to store charge- which in turn creates a potential difference, which is another name for a voltage) in a quantity that would not naturally occur without the presence of the dielectric.

Schneibster,

Thank you for your reply, and welcome back to the forum. I should have been more specific when I said “charged entities associated with the dielectric composition between the electrodes." What I meant by “charged entities” was any dipole system in which positive and negative charges are separated, but where there is overall charge neutrality. Such dipole systems could take the form of simple space charges (such as electrets in the PET) or, in a more complex system, be polaritonic electromagnetic energy waves. Simply put, do such dipolar “charged entities” in a dielectric composition subtract from the final plate charge differential in a capacitor fully charged to 3500 V, thereby making the plate charge differential less than 3500 V?

dp

Ummm, "polaritonic electromagnetic energy waves" is word salad. Keep in mind that there are no actual things called polaritons, as far as we're aware; on the other hand, there do appear to be actual things called electrons. The polariton (and some of the other types of twists that lattices can undergo which can store or transmit energy) is a bookkeeping device; pretending the twist can be treated as a pseudo-entity actually does work, but that's not an indication that the pseudo-entity is real. It's a mathematical artifact. In this case, the model works but we don't yet know quite why because we don't know enough math yet.

With charges as the fundamental entities, you will have a much easier time understanding what the real situation is. Start there, that's the point I'm making (and that TP was making before me). You'll find it much easier to understand what's going on.

ETA: Oh, and a plate charge differential (or any other charge addition, difference, multiple, divisor, or dividend) is measured in coulombs, not volts.

OK, so the skinny appears to be they had a partial meltdown of at least one reactor core's fuel rods; whether this happened in the core, or in the holding pools, is probably unknown at this time. The evidence confirming this is that plutonium contamination was found outside one of the containments.

Apparently a couple engineers went for a walk in environment suits inside one of the containments, thinking that being sealed away from the water would protect them. Big mistake. They are being treated for radiation burns from the radioactive water that sent radiation right through the suits and boots to their feet, and are not expected to lose any of them.

The biggest problem they have is that they are trying not to lose face. As a result information is coming out in a trickle and they are not asking for help early enough when they really do need it.

All of the reactors at the complex have been cooled with seawater, which basically wrecks them; the seawater, at that temperature, corrodes the core into junk. Keeping them cool is going to be an ongoing problem until they can figure out how to harden some remotely operated vehicles to take care of things in there. I'm surprised they're still fussing around with having people work in there; perhaps the incident of the engineers' feet will get them rolling on one of their national pastimes, robotics.

While it is possible that there could be some incredibly minute contamination here in the US, it's going to be damn near indetectable by the time it gets across the Pacific ocean. Of course, there isn't a newspaper in the country that would ever dream of telling you that; you might stop reading articles.

ETA: Oh, and the death toll so far?

Zero. Like, as in, zipsky, diddly squat, nada. No one. Not one single person has died yet or is likely to ever as a result of this "horrible nucular accident."

Not one.

Remember that when you read the horseshit that's going to be spread around just like after Chernobyl and TMI.

Last edited Thu, 31 Mar 2011, 2:34pm by Schneibster

Oh, and one other thing: I went back and looked, because my recollection was they were indeed printing them wholesale, like a newspaper. I was right. They cut them up afterward and discard any that didn't come out right. You were right. But it looks like we both had something to learn about how they're doing it.

ETA: Meanwhile, yes, artificial scarcity. Might as well get rich off it, right?

I'm not clear on how the analogy failed. Please explain that to me in more detail.

They're now calling it "giant dielectric constant." Like as in "giant magnetoresistance." Which someone should be looking up. Considering how it's a disk drive thing.

Remember disk drives?

Test post?

I'll join the general accolades, G, and repeat my thanks to your wife for the initial proofread. Good job.

I was inexact; you're correct. Still, I think the point I was making is that it's very inexpensive, and I don't think the correction affects that point.

grizz wrote:

And how many people died as a result of Chernobyl ?

I think that's been properly dealt with.

grizz wrote:

Is Chernobyl a bunch of hysteria?

Grizz

Not entirely, but considering only 62 people died it's not much of a "worst nuclear disaster evar." It's also a design that would never be used in the West, because (as must now be obvious to even the least perspicacious) it's a dangerous design with inadequate safety margins. Engineering practice in the West would not have permitted such a plant in the 1950s, much less the 1990s. Given that, comparing any Western nuclear plant to Chernobyl is in fact just exactly and precisely hysteria and nothing else but.

student wrote:

Schneibster wrote:

You might want to read this before you make up your mind you know what happened.

And that's not the end of the story either.

It was an interesting perspective. I have no problem with the guy's software.

Neither do I. I have another one which is about the mathematician who came up with the precise method of "proving" that you could make more money by mixing the bad home loans in with the good ones in just the proper proportions; specifically, he quantified the risk as low, which it was, and forgot to quantify the downside when he was telling his bosses about it, which was the entire economy goes kaput. In fact, he told them that at the end, and they ignored him. He's hiding in India now, and the Indian government won't let the journalists at him, or the lawyers either.

student wrote:

Most people don't understand this stuff. He doesn't understand it if he thinks his software contributed. It did not contribute to the problem.

I agree; and he says substantially that early in the piece. OTOH, if I had written it, I'd feel the same way he does: vaguely guilty by association, knowing it's wrong, but unable to shake it.

Well, "analogous" doesn't mean "is." What they're saying is that they use the same sorts of math to describe them.

The Helmholtz double-layer structure is ubiquitous in nature; kinda like accretion disks in astronomy, which range from those around planets ("rings") to black holes to those behind the formation of solar systems and galaxies. It's all one phenomenon, mathematically, but no one would ever say that a galaxy is a black hole accretion disk (though they may yet turn out to have started out as one).