Indrek wrote:Art Carlson wrote:Are you saying that one can find in those pictures a structure where the ratio of ion to electron density differs significantly from unity, and where the density, potential difference, and size differ significantly from the relationship I gave?
Basically, yes. The model/picture there satisfy the Coulomb law/Gauss law div E=-rho/e0 and satisfy the densities specified by Bussard - as I calculated in my previous message. In contradiction to your general statement. Now what happens when things are scaled to densities at 10T I don't know.
Would you mind giving some numbers?
- n_e
- n_i
- the geometry of the structure (smallest dimension, and whether it is more spherical, cylindrical, or slab shaped)
- the potential difference within the structure
Indrek wrote:Art Carlson wrote:Indrek wrote:Anyways let me point out the error in your thinking. The rest I don't follow. Do you still think you found an error in my thinking or not?
Take a +5V battery. Attach a large metal plate to one of the electrodes. How much charge moves into the plate? Hardly any. Now. Attach a second metal plate to the battery's second electrode and bring it close to the first plate. Something amazing happens. Large quantities of charge move into the plates. The net charge in individual plates is humungous, despite them only being at +5V.
But you just proved this can't happen. You just proved capacitors can't work.
And I didn't bring out this ridiculous example of capacitors for nothing. The polywell (as an ideal) is a sort of a capacitor. One plate is the coils. The other plate is the magnetic field against which the (net) electrons squeeze.
Could you give a little more detail of the problem you see? There are no particles at all, and hence no non-neutrality, in the space between the capacitors. With the metal of the capacitor plates, there is no electric field and therefore no net charge density, ergo no non-neutrality. The only non-neutrality in the system is an excess of electrons in a thin layer near the surface of the plates. And the thickness of that layer will indeed be very tiny.
That's true it is thin in a capacitor. Does it have to be thin in the polywell? I can't say. Where is it located. My conjecture is closest to the coils. Which brings me back to the reason why I don't think polywell will work (read my messages before).
However, electrostatics models show that without breaking the Coulomb law it could be somewhere else. What's the physics that puts it there? I have no idea.
The layer of surface charge in a polywell can be much larger than in a capacitor because the density is much, much smaller than solid density. That's why I talk about microns and not Angtroms.