Talk-Polywell.org

There is a confusion about the exact meaning of the "even number of faces at a vertex" requirement. The question is whether this requirement refers to faces in a magnetic reagion sense, or faces in a geometrical, physical sense.

If there are 4 fields that meet at a vertex, does that meet the requirement, even if the coils that create those four fields don't themselves extend all the way to the vertex? Note that the coils would have a small space between them that PHYSICALLY could be considered a very small truncation of the rectified polyhedron, but the small space does not have a coil associated with it. thoughts?

DrN or other knowledgable individual, would you please chime in?

Seems no one knows or cares.

I don't care, and I'm not sure how much I know. At least part of the confusion comes from starting with an idea that assumes discrete patches of inward and outward field, leading directly to the an even number of faces meeting at each vertex. The trouble, as Bussard himself later realized but seemed to forget now and then, is that, with sufficient symmetry, there is then a field null at each vertex, which leaks. The solution proposed is to leave a gap between discrete coils. Nothing wrong with that. But then your topology is discrete islands of inward field surrounded by a continuous sea of outward field. Maybe the polywogs don't like talking about it that way because it starts to look too much like a spindle cusp. What the real reason is, that I'm sure I don't know.

Art Carlson wrote: Maybe the polywogs don't like talking about it that way because it starts to look too much like a spindle cusp.

Spindle cusp? That is a new one on me. Another forray into cyberspace.

KitemanSA wrote:Spindle cusp? That is a new one on me. Another forray into cyberspace.

That's the garden variety magnetic cusp. Put two circular coils facing each other and you get a point cusp through each coil and a line cusp circling the axis between them. Nothing "funny" or "quasi" about those cusps.

There is a confusion about the exact meaning of the "even number of faces at a vertex" requirement. The question is whether this requirement refers to faces in a magnetic reagion sense, or faces in a geometrical, physical sense.

Both, I think, or either.

KitemanSA wrote:If there are 4 fields that meet at a vertex, does that meet the requirement, even if the coils that create those four fields don't themselves extend all the way to the vertex? Note that the coils would have a small space between them that PHYSICALLY could be considered a very small truncation of the rectified polyhedron, but the small space does not have a coil associated with it. thoughts?

Clearly this is true if you look at the polygons Bussard considered acceptable, and the spacing on WB-7.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectified_cube
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icosadodecahedron

I recently saw a doc that listed three shapes he was considering. I don't remember which doc it was though.