Jones Beene wrote:
--- Horace wrote:
If you will notice there is no mention of closing
the loop or self running in the video.
Dr, Stiffler will not make such a comment until he can
float the system, with zero input.
And he is correct in that decision, of course.
As I stated, and the video demonstrates, the signal
can be disconnected now after startup, but not both
the ground and the signal.
Small but significant correction:
Rather than say "...the signal can be disconnected now /after/
/startup/", say "Only one wire needs to be connected".
The system _starts_ just fine with just one wire, as we saw in video #7.
If it had to be "started" before one wire could be disconnected that
would indeed seem to suggest some regenerative process was taking place
in the circuit which needed to be initiated so it could feed itself
power to keep operating.
On the other hand, the simple realization that it operates with either
wire connected, with no need to "start" any internal process before such
operation can commence, seems very consistent with the possibility that
the "disconnected" wire has a sufficiently high-capacitance connection
to the circuit to allow it to function as, for sure, a "circuit" rather
than a single wire.
Remember also
that the "signal" is no more than a few milliwatts at
best
I have not seen a measurement of the power leaving the signal generator
(at the SG's end of the wire). So, I don't know what the signal power
actually is. If capacitive coupling is playing a large role here, then
measurements made /at the circuit/ may not tell the whole story, and in
fact conclusive measurements may be difficult to make in general.
I also saw no assertion in the transcript of video #7 that the signal
generator had been turned off, which is a significant question. You may
_assume_ it was not running, but without a statement to that effect such
an assumption is not well founded. (Do you turn off all the equipment
in the lab whenever you stop using it for a little while, or do you just
let it sit there and consume a few watts? Personally, I'm of the school
which doesn't hit the "off" button until I go to bed for the night, and
maybe not even then. I don't know how Ron operates so I can't guess
whether he would have shut off the "disconnected" signal generator or not.)
Back on video #5 (I think?), when one wire was first shown disconnected
and the circuit continued to operate, the other wire was left in place
all the way up to the side of the Faraday cage. An interesting
experiment would have been to strip off the disconnected wire all the
way back to the signal generator, lose the Faraday cage, and make sure
the signal generator was a good 10 feet or more from the circuit board.
That would reduce the capacitive coupling quite a bit, I would think;
it would be interesting to know what kind of difference that made. With
the "disconnected" lead running right up to within an inch or two of the
aluminum pie plate, OTOH, the capacitive coupling is likely to be pretty
large.
It would also have been interesting to "float" the signal generator (run
it on batteries), to eliminate or reduce the possibly significant stray
capacitance between the ground pin of the SG and the circuit: With it
plugged in the ground path may very well run all around the room, and
may include heating ducts, radiators, and even the legs of the table on
which the circuit sits.
[ ... ]
I think I mentioned all of this before in various
scattered postings, so why the insinuations?
What insinuations?
Speculation as to how it works, sure, lots of that. Is that bad?
If you post a weird circuit to a mailing list with a lot of EE types on
it (either amateur or otherwise) you should /expect/ to get speculation
as to how it works. If that's against the rules, then so is thinking.
If searching for a conventional explanation for an apparent COE
violation in a simple system is considered "unreasonable" or
"closed-minded", then we have entered the realm of religion.
