Riding under a powerline bad for battery?

[Canmore TLCC 29]

It is true that the gas within the tube will fluoresce when in the presence of a strong enough field. You can have loads of fun with some fluorescent tubes, compasses, powerful magnets, wires, or whatever else you have laying around. The world is an experimenter's toolbox.

Only yesterday, Derek Muller put up a video on YouTube that is relevant to our conversation. It's really geeky stuff, so it might only appeal the propellerheads among us. If you don't want to squander your morning watching the whole thing, jump to around 13:30. The lower wire in the diagram is you and your bike as you ride beneath the power lines.

Yes, I watched that video yesterday too. Pretty amazing to learn that our boiled down version of how electricity is transmitted was wrong. Makes sense that if you are going to make a computer chip, that you need to know what Derek presented in the video.

 

[RustyIron]

Yes, I watched that video yesterday too. Pretty amazing to learn that our boiled down version of how electricity is transmitted was wrong. Makes sense that if you are going to make a computer chip, that you need to know what Derek presented in the video.

It's fascinating, for sure. On many occasions I've been challenged by electrical fields creating undesirable effects. Traditional thinking was what I used to solve the problems, and although it's nice to look at things from another perspective, I'm not certain that this level of knowledge is all that helpful in our everyday lives. Crude "E=IR" thinking will probably work just fine for everything that you and I ever encounter.

It's like trying to build a bike shed using a hammer, nail, and wood. It's easy when we look at it from the perspective of an Amish carpenter. Thinking of the shed as leptons, gluons, and fermions is going to leave your bike out in the rain for a long, long time.

 

[MountainBoy]

It's fascinating, for sure. On many occasions I've been challenged by electrical fields creating undesirable effects. Traditional thinking was what I used to solve the problems, and although it's nice to look at things from another perspective, I'm not certain that this level of knowledge is all that helpful in our everyday lives. Crude "E=IR" thinking will probably work just fine for everything that you and I ever encounter.

It's like trying to build a bike shed using a hammer, nail, and wood. It's easy when we look at it from the perspective of an Amish carpenter. Thinking of the shed as leptons, gluons, and fermions is going to leave your bike out in the rain for a long, long time.

Not helpful in our everyday lives?

Everyone lives different lives; it really comes down to what your everyday life consists of. If you work at Tesla designing motors and inverters to power EV's, you definitely need to think like this. Or you will be fired. If you work as an electrician installing charge circuits for EV's, you can get by with the simplified models that electrical code uses.

 

[IndigoUnicorn]

Well, this popped up in my FB feed this morning.

 

[MountainBoy]

Well, this popped up in my FB feed this morning. View attachment 87314

I've heard of people who live near powerlines getting busted for theft of electricity when they have set up big loops of wire to capture the electricity and convert it to household current. Apparently such a setup increases loss from the lines. You would think it would be free for the taking but if it were, people would buy cheap land under transmission lines and make a business of it costing the electric company millions of dollars in extra transmission losses.